Kindling
by Aenigmatic
Summary: Molly Dawes never manages to save Bashira and it all quite literally, blows up in a catastrophic event that has unforeseen consequences, both for her and the Section's Captain. Yet loss pulls apart and binds. Sometimes, it leads down a road so unexpected where kindling can be found.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: What if Bashira wasn't too lucky with the suicide vest?_

 _Written solely because of the utterly, utterly dismal finale of S2, which capped off a disappointing series where James functioned only as a hovering figure, relegated to 'dad' status as he watched over Georgie and kept Elvis in line—both characters whom I didn't exactly like (the latter being the worst of the lot). I'm convinced that unless S3—I read this piece of renewal news with trepidation—stops with this soapish love triangle stuff and brings back M/CJ (in their full capacities, please and not as bit-part characters) together doing Army things with Two Section, it'll never quite reach the heights of S1._

 _Now, I think I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask...had this (what I've written) really happened in the series, how do you think M/CJ would have developed? What would you have liked to see happen?_

{…}

In the choking heat of the day, the villagers scattered. Like flocks of headless chickens, they pushed past the sudden throng of soldiers, fleeing the makeshift marketplace and kicked up an enormous cloud of dust in their wake.

A daily routine, routinely disrupted.

From his position at the side of the Mastiff, James only kept his eyes on the Afghan Special Forces, unable to shrug away the prickly feeling that'd settled heavy on his neck whispering something was going to fuck up spectacularly today.

Plans had been made on intel gleaned from a source that may or may not have been reliable, blurted out almost inconsequentially to a medic convinced of its veracity because of her apparent closeness to the child. Too much depended on this girl's ability to eavesdrop, to put together the contextual clues and to relate it all in a short, cryptic warning that Major Beck had chosen to take seriously.

It could go as brilliantly as much as it could all go down the drain with a price that the lads and the ANA, as he suspected, couldn't pay.

"Steady!"

He tightened his grip on his rifle, scanning the familiar territory as the ASF raced through the villagers and closed in on the perimeter of the small, walled compound. Took in the hard, rectangular mud-brick buildings, built in neat rows, worn and peeling in the unrelenting environment. A quick glance backward assured him that Two Section had found their own positions, lined up behind him and on the other side of the patrol vehicle.

They were locked and loaded. Muscles tense, ready to spring. Hyper alert, sweating like pigs. Perched at the moment where painstaking hours of tactical strategy would coalesce into action that brought the op to the point of no return.

James hoped to hell they were all up for it.

He gave himself a hard, mental shake, depressing the button on his comm radio as he gauged the distance from vehicle to compound.

Ten metres.

A five second run straight, a turn left down the main alley and up against the back wall of Badrai's dwelling.

Twenty seconds, twenty-five at most.

And the time for bloody ruminating was over.

"Prepare to move…move!"

Unfolding from his crouched position, he sprinted down the same path as the ASF, splitting at the last moment to round the corner to the back of the house with the reassuring shuffle of boots on hard sand loud behind him.

"Go!"

Distant shouts in Pashto signalled that the ASF had breached the front.

His cue to move.

A sharp signal to the lads and they burst in through the back, guns raised, barrels pointing into empty air and the dust motes floating in the shafts of sunlight that slanted through the dirty windows.

No Bashira, no Badrai. No rational answer to Dawes's panicked question about this potentially buggered op.

Fucking _nothing_.

Dawes's clear agitation matched the unfamiliar tightness in his chest, a growing sign of unease he just couldn't shake, not until the crackle of a voice over the radio broke the confusion.

"I have eyes on the girl!"

"Something's not right, Sir. The locals are anxious," Kinders reported.

"Outside! Now!"

Dawes needed no second invitation, taking off through the front and straight into the perimeter that the lads have formed. He followed on her heels, only to come to an abrupt stop when the girl in question emerged out of a back alley, her hands clasped under her hijab, walking the walk of the condemned.

Around her, the handful of villagers pointed and gestured, stepping over themselves to get away from her like she was a threat.

That heavy, prickly feeling morphed into a loud buzz in his ears that he couldn't shake off, honed sharp after three tours in Afghan and all the shit he couldn't unpluck from his own head.

So what the hell was it th—

 _Fuck._

In that same second, it came to him, his legs instinctively retreating to a safe distance as he frantically motioned to the lads to stay back. He dropped to a knee, already looking through the scope, ready to fire.

"Bashira, stop! Stop! Do not move! Lift your arms up!"

The order, repeated in Pashto by Qaseem, finally seemed to register with the girl.

 _Fucking hell._

The suicide vest emerged as she raised her arms and stayed put where she stood—the worst kind of nightmare that could afflict any soldier for eternity.

"Kinders," James yelled, making sure that the lads were in position. "I want all mobile signals blocked! The rest of you, take cover!"

"Copy, Sir!"

"Yes, Sir!"

Only that bloody medic of his froze and took a step _forward_ while shucking the med Bergen, apparently impervious to anything else but the terrified girl.

"Dawes, move! Fucking move, _now_!"

Contrary to his orders and the rest of Two Section's horrified shouts, he saw Dawes tentatively inching nearer to Bashira instead, her plea soft and desperate.

"Please, Sir! I need to do this. I have to keep her calm, Sir."

No fucking way—no _fucking_ way was she doing this.

Panic and fury, both strange and unknown emotions in a time like this, made him see red. Hazed his vision, blurred the focus.

Had she no bleedin' sense of preservation? No regard for the damn troop but herself and the locals?

His medic, too full of pluck and determination, was convinced it was going to end well for all of them. But he knew better than to tempt fate, or at least, the Taliban whose tactics were crudely more effective than all their late-night strategy sessions combined.

Acting on instinct, James sprang from his crouch and closed the distance to Dawes in two strides. With a hard yank around her waist, he threw his weight over her and hurled them both the other way before she could say anything else, relying on momentum to throw them where he—

The blast of the IED shattered the air and his eardrums, the impact sending them both sprawling into the side of the mastiff. He skidded into its protective front guard with Dawes still awkwardly halfway under him and clutched tightly to his chest, the pain of the hard hit guaranteeing massive bruises that he'd be suffering for the next week.

It took a few seconds for the world to right itself and he scrambled off her, hands already moving quickly over her body to check for injuries.

"Dawes! Dawes, talk to me!"

"Sir—"

That was good enough for him.

She was talking, awake, alive and kicking. As bruised as he was going to be and massively sore after the bollocking she was going to get, but miraculously fine.

Relief, like a cold shower, flooded his chest, making his hands shake. Fast on its heels, however, was a blinding anger that he knew better than to let loose right now.

With a grimace, he scrambled to his feet, mentally steeling himself for what he was going to see. Already the acrid stink of burning flesh permeated the air, the blood spatter and viscera staining the mud-brick houses a deep, dull red that only many cycles of rain will wash away.

Yet another loss today, for the Army and the ASF, but one that Dawes was going to take far too personally.

{…}

It wasn't quite evening when Dawes entered his tent and stood at parade rest, looking as fatigued as the lads and as puffy-eyed as he'd ever seen her.

"You wanted to see me, Sir?"

James stood slowly, deliberately taking a step in her personal space, and let the heavy silence speak before he did. Intimidation was exactly what he strove for—not a tactic he employed ever—but it seemed justification enough after today's harrowing events that had him scraped raw on all sides.

From the way she stiffened, he knew he'd succeeded.

The first question was mild. "So what was that today, Dawes?"

"A suicide bomb, Sir." Her answer was sombre without a flinch, the cocksure attitude now a gaping hole in that feisty personality of which he'd unexpectedly grown fond.

But the memory of Dawes walking toward danger so deliberately was burned permanently on his retinas, that particular scar so fresh that the conflicting surge of anger and panic returned in an instant, loosening his already tenacious grip on the emotional detachment he thought he'd mastered.

"I told you I need you a hundred percent by my side," he told her flatly, the censure already thick in his voice. "I didn't see that today. When I give you an order, I expect you to listen. And there's bloody good reason for that, Dawes. I can't have another replacement medic flown out here because my current one's a reckless idiot taking the piss for a local girl in her sights than her own platoon mates who wouldn't even have a medic if you were red-misted today."

If anything, she stood straighter and tilted her chin upwards. "I understand, Sir. I fucked up. And I'm sorry."

The speed at which she apologised startled him into momentary speechlessness. Of all the responses he'd envisioned, none of it included this sad, defeated version of the impulsive but dedicated medic who'd foolishly crossed a minefield and saved the best recruit in Catterick from bleeding out.

He pushed her further, needing to see what lurked beneath that stiff apology. "Are you, Dawes?"

She shifted a little, finally averting her eyes, her choked whisper now paper-thin. "I can't make sense of it, boss. Can't stop seeing the blood and all."

"It's war," he told her curtly. "You know that."

Everything else was left unspoken. The deaths and the bodies, the endless patrols, the regimented routines that demanded the horrors to be buried deep down before the day ended…all the things she hadn't yet gotten used to.

And he, as it seemed, was incapable of offering more. Not the comforting shoulder of a friend to cry on nor some useless platitudes to alleviate how gutted she felt without venturing into territory he didn't want to go into. Not when it was never more painfully obvious that a yawning gap of experience—and with it, the hard-won cynicism of three full tours—separated them.

A small spark returned to those watery eyes, flashing a challenge. "A pointless one at that too."

His throat was suddenly dry, as though her succinct counterargument had frazzled him. In some way, it had. His absolute trust in those higher up to do the best thing for all involved hadn't wavered until this small, seemingly-innocent question threatened to dislodge the beautiful jigsaw he'd assembled of his place in the Army and his clearly-delineated duties each time he deployed.

"Not yours to question why." His shut down was quick and succinct. "So tell me, what the fuck were you thinking, Dawes?"

Again, he saw the hesitation that had her eyes shifting towards his and downwards again.

"I was thinking of you, Boss."

His breath left him in a rush, the sudden awareness of her nearness crushing enough to push him a voluntary step back. Whatever his reasons had been for calling her into the tent, whatever answers he was expecting to hear from her, it wasn't this bluntly honest one that had him as off balance as when he'd tackled her forcefully off and past the suicide bomb's blast radius.

"What the hell are you saying, Dawes?"

"On the first night at Bastion," she rushed on, oblivious to the sudden roil of emotions he felt, "when I had to stay in the all females' tent, I met Jackie, who told me all about Geraint and what you did. And I knew I wanted to make that difference. Wanting to be brave and all. And I thought if I could stop the—"

Exquisite agony. At least he thought that was the painful burn rushing through him was what he felt. If she only knew how often he tried to blink away the constant ghost of Geraint Smith that still sat and laughed at him at inopportune moments, or about the marriage that he'd managed to bugger up because of his love of military life—

"That's enough, Dawes."

"Sir?" Wary confusion lined her face.

"It was remotely detonated." His interruption was swift, mostly to stop her from going down the never-ending path of regret and guilt. "There was nothing you could have done but get out of the way."

Her shoulders dropped, the tension inherently required of parade rest ebbing away as the implications of his statement sunk in.

"Things could have been so different. Still, I wish—"

He had no intention of going into the argument where altruism shared the very thin side of a coin with stupidity.

It was the lesson Dawes had probably learnt too well today, even if it was the hardest and the most painful way of doing so. The steepest of steepest learning curves that she'd had to climb as yet and a particularly bitter lesson that could only be ingrained in one's memory after it was written in blood.

"Nothing you could have done," he repeated in a softer tone. "Yes, things could have been different. You would have been red misted, along with her. And I…I wouldn't have forgiven myself if you hadn't."

And that, he realised belatedly, was exactly the core of the entire conundrum.

The answers to several 'whys' when it came to Dawes were painfully lacking when they usually weren't, leaving him at the very end of this session, feeling trapped and as dissatisfied as he'd ever been when he was back on leave and itching to get back to the action where home really was.

"You aren't any less brave for getting out of the blast radius. You've proven yourself with Smurf when you risked your life to save his."

Dawes finally nodded, the conflict clearly still written on her face.

"Yes, Boss. And I…thank you for saving me, Sir."

Just there, that light in her eyes was what he didn't want to see. He swallowed hard and nodded once. Had that come from the lads, James would have brushed it off. But with Dawes, he didn't want the hero-worship. Not that uncomfortable, hallowed pedestal that Smurf seemed to have put him on since Geraint took a bullet to the neck.

That simple thank-you, had shaken him harder than the thought of them nearly losing their lives today when that bloody vest went off.

This was beyond difficult when it shouldn't have been.

"Pull yourself together, Dawes. Two Section need you watching their backs. I need you back. Fully loaded, completely operational. By morning."

"Sir."

She edged out quietly, leaving him with only thoughts that weren't quite words yet.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: I fear that we won't ever see Molly and James back anymore in S3, hence this frenzy of writing that seems to be coming out of nowhere. Because I've taken the story in this peculiar direction, I wonder what would happen if Molly were taken hostage (and what it would mean for M/CJ). Sort of like Georgie in S2._

{…}

 _"Dawes! Move!"_

She wasn't moving, her feet having already sunk deep into the Afghan soil, pinned down by roots of terror and uncertainty.

The earth was moving instead. Or rather, tilting, shaking, making her cower until the smell of blood and smoke filled her nose. Burnt flesh that'd turned black, mixed with brown and red. So much red.

 _Oh god…oh god…oh god…_

He's not going to live.

Something like panic set in, but it was fuzzy around the edges.

Whatever held her captive suddenly turned her loose, loose enough to stumble free, to fly through the air with a heavy weight somehow also landed on her that didn't move despite her increasingly frantic yells that he needed to stay with her—

"Dawes, move your arse."

And there it was. The anchoring voice that pulled her from the danger zone when her own feeble mental strength couldn't.

Bossman.

Quite alive, unlike Bashira, so steady and solid and more than just a discombobulated voice in the echoes of a dream that still played itself out in the back of her head. Crouched over her bed, he'd been shaking her awake, the warmth of his heavy hand on her shoulder a comforting weight when her world had been crumbling to dust.

Another night, another nightmare, the same routine that broke up a solid six hours into piecemeal offerings of fretful rest.

With a couple of quick blinks, her eyes finally adjusted to the dim light she kept on in the medic tent. The last vestiges of the dream and the burn of tears dissipated, as did the irrational urge to grab his hand and not let go. At that moment, he seemed larger than life, not quite the top bloke hero that Smurf made him out to be, but as the commanding officer who saw too much and said all the right things she needed to hear.

He stood, rustling her thin bed sheet as he did, but the heat from his hand lingered on her shoulder, taking away the night chill.

"You alright, Dawes?"

It was a complicated question.

Stripped raw from the dream, the temptation to throw it in his face was strong as she debated telling him what she really felt. That she constantly dangled at the edge of hysteria and panic when it finally went quiet in the FOB, exacerbated by the isolation of the medic tent? Or that the guilt and anger—for endangering the boys and him and for failing the girl who would never have a life now—wouldn't go away?

James had already shown he would understand of course, as he'd proven with the several checks he'd done on her since Bashira had blown up. Yet, inevitably, there was only one answer he, as her Commanding Officer, would accept.

Sitting up alone took an effort, but she wouldn't let him see that. "Why wouldn't I be?"

There was no option but to go on in this FOB that was the furthest from the fanciful psychological evaluations that she probably had to go through a thousand miles away when the tour was over.

Until then, it was just her, Two Section and Captain James…with a job that had just barely started and one that she needed to do without everyone else fearing she was becoming the cog in the wheel that had come loose.

He nodded slightly, his hard perusal of her face both unwavering and disconcerting. It left her feeling too exposed, too vulnerable without the armour her combat gear provided and the comforting distance that rank sometimes gave.

"They'll go away eventually."

Their eyes briefly met before she looked away.

Molly liked that he didn't quite deny the chaotic mess that she couldn't really get out of, and that he could be—and proved he was—always real with her. But he'd guessed precisely what was bothering her by putting a name to the night terrors that left her shaking and broken, then spoken as though he empathised. Encouraged her to unload without coddling her, then once, in a rare moment, told her briefly about Geraint Smith who'd in so many ways, been his Achilles heel.

That alone, made her grateful, as though she needed one more thing to admire and respect about the man.

"Will they? Coz' from where I am, they seem to be staying put."

"From where I am, ordinarily I'd ask for a replacement medic and send you straight back for an evaluation but it's an exercise in futility."

Panic flared at his statement, as she tried to breathe through the rush of denial at what the boss was suggesting.

"But you're already a casualty replacement, Dawes. Any new personnel wouldn't arrive until after the new year and that's when Afghanistan supposedly comes into its own without the help of the British Army."

"No, Sir, please."

For the first time, Molly saw the frustration in his crossed arms and the ruffled hair.

But she was already shaking her head in protest. An extended time away was unthinkable—away from the boss and the section—, her first tour cut short because of her inability to limit her involvement with the locals and its staggering consequences.

It couldn't be over. _She_ couldn't be over.

"I don't want to, as much as I should." His firm reply cut through her haze of fear, but it didn't give her any comfort to think that he felt she stood constantly on the brink of becoming mad. "You'd be a number on a file somewhere, with months of therapy ahead of you."

There were shades of their previous but brief conversations in this; him talking her through the process of dealing with post-traumatic stress and her insistence that he not treat her differently from the way he talked to the lads.

The rest of the section had seen the blast as much as she had, although they'd admittedly swallowed the experience with some measure of solemnity and then went on as though nothing had happened. Then again, they hadn't that growing connection with the kid who now lay in bloody pieces all over the shop.

"Two Section need you."

That was bleedin' obvious, as much as Molly knew she needed his faith in her back in place, where it was before the whole shit incident with Bashira.

What would it take to convince him otherwise?

"I'm not a failure, Boss," she insisted, still stung with the realisation what he might have thought she was.

His expression was unyielding and his comeback immediate. "Never said you were. Did you not recall my saying that you're an excellent medic?"

In frustration, she struggled to her feet to face him, forgetting as the blanket fell away that she wasn't in her full kit but in a thin sleep shirt and not much more apart from the plain Primark knickers that her Nan had chucked at her as a deployment gift. The blanket lay tangled in her bare toes as she took an unthinking step, only to pitch forward in a sure stumble toward the ground.

Only the bulk of his body and his instinctive move to catch her stopped that mortifying, downward trajectory.

The ground jumped beneath her feet a second time when she saw him realise how little she wore and felt his steadying hands on her waist that somehow made space non-existent between them.

In the next breath, he'd averted his eyes and jerked away as if the accidental contact had burned him, but not before she caught the unnameable glint of something in them.

"Ops tent now. Full-kit."

The boss was out of the tent before he'd finished the order.

The fuzzy cobwebs of sleep cleared completely, replaced by the slow burn of anticipation of a day that would start in the ungodly hours of the early morning. Putting on the combat fatigues was as much a welcome action as was going to bed only a few hours ago.

Yet the only thing she could really think about as she threw on the clothes was the flicker of alarm in his face before he shuttered it away.

{…}

"American intelligence suggests that the small Taliban cell destabilising this region is larger than initially suspected. Badrai has fled to the stronghold in the mountains and is believed to have linked up with a bigger cell. Our task on the ground has changed. In addition to advising, supporting and assisting the ANA around the FOB, the Afghan Special Forces will require Two Section's backup as they carry out missions in this area."

The bout of silence in the ops tent wasn't unexpected, but it gave Two Section some time at least to digest the piece of news.

Kinders stepped in briefly. "Your workload has just doubled, boys, and Dawes, your planned R&R might just be down the shitter."

Not that James was entirely sorry about that particular announcement, as the quiet hoots and cheers momentarily broke the cracking tension in the ops tent.

The best recruit in Catterick and his indispensable medic away together? It sounded like a recipe made for disaster, seeing as the prats knew nothing about filtering their filthy imaginations that Smurf only gleefully helped feed.

Only Dawes stayed uncharacteristically quiet, her exasperated glares at them sharp enough to cut their banter short.

He slid a glance at her, unsurprised to see the pallor of her skin under the harsh fluorescent lighting, and uncertain about what to make of the encounter in the tent that had begun with a wake-up call and ended with a searing, white-hot moment that had shaken him more deeply than he wanted to admit.

The suicide vest incident had been the catalyst for helping several pieces fall into place; in the days that had passed, a combination of local and foreign intel had driven home the point that they were dealing with a larger and a better linked network of insurgents than they'd accounted for.

James had gone over the plans numerous times in his mind, assimilating the perspectives that both the US forces and the ASF have provided, then poked holes into it and sought out its flaws. Yet he came up empty and lacking, his focus shot to hell after days of strategic meetings, non-stop planning and worrying about a medic who suddenly seemed to be in the centre of it all.

Sandhurst's preparation for field operations as woefully lacking as a sunny day in bloody England, but then, there'd been the unspoken expectation that the only experience in the theatre of war would fill in the gaps that they needed to know. Tactics were made and remade on the table and then forgotten the moment the skirmish between soldiers and insurgents began.

What was planned and hypothetical in the theatre of war, had never ever stood up to the real and the messy. As it always did in real life, not just war.

He'd left Kinders to the early morning PTs, to schedule the night patrols and generally keep the lads from degenerating into pissy wankers because they had nothing else to do. Keeping his head busy but focused on the mission was a cracking plan but all it'd taken was an unpredictable moment with Dawes to—

 _Shit._

What had begun as a wake-up kick in the arse for the lads and his medic had turned into something that had forced him to regard Dawes through yet another lens that he'd sworn he never would. Where it'd forced him into that surreal sliver of time and the promises it held.

What that accidental blanket… _thing_ with Dawes had shown, was this was becoming fucking unhinged—no, _he_ was becoming unhinged, torn between the kind of commiserating… _care_ a Commanding Officer shouldn't be showing a subordinate and keeping his focus on bringing everyone back alive and hopefully unscathed.

The first moment he was getting for R&R, he'd be shipping himself back and voluntarily putting himself under psychiatric evaluation.

James hadn't drawn more than a steadying breath when Major Beck's pointer smacked hard against a densely-contoured area on the topographical map surface east of the FOB, halting the beginning of their raucous talk and his own private musings.

"At 0300 hours, Afghan Special Forces led by Captains Taj and Azizi will conduct a pre-emptive strike at the cell's stronghold in the mountain pass. Captain James will lead Two Section for ground support."

The lads sat up straighter, their attention already tacked on the photos taped to the side of the map.

A nondescript compound, built with mudbrick, tucked precariously into a curve at a treacherous point of the pass.

Beck didn't miss a beat. "This mission is critical. If we succeed, we will be disabling an important node in the Taliban network. So stay sharp. Understood?"

Two Section barked their affirmation.

"Good. Get ready to move, now."

{…}

Spread over the perimeter of the compound, Molly watched as the ASF stormed into the cluster of buildings, their movements economical and efficient. And so very practiced.

Next to her, the boss lay quietly on his stomach with his rifle pointed at the target, his slow, even breaths and unwavering focus a calming force that she tried to match.

Without warning, the rattle of gunfire took over and shattered the stillness of the night, then abruptly stopped. Rough and sudden commands issued in Pashto filtered harsh and loud through her headset, making her flinch involuntarily.

"Close in!"

The order from the boss had the section scrambling over the uneven terrain to encircle the cell's compound as the ASF rounded up the insurgents.

This was textbook. So far. A mission that hadn't deviated from plan, apparently too easy as the soldiers returned with only a handful of blindfolded men in traditional Afghan garb with hands bound behind their backs.

"Need a medic!" Qaseem's voice rang clear through the comm radio, spurring her into action just as the boss gave her the clearance to go.

A quick assessment of the wounded had a gravely-injured insurgent first in her sights, followed by Brains who'd stupidly twisted his ankle on the incline and could probably wait it out until they got back to the FOB.

She reached the babbling sod quickly, ignored his screams and curses that he spewed at her and the ASF soldiers and got down to work with the pressure bandage she'd already cut open.

A half hour later, the departing MERT took him out of her hands as the red dawn wrestled the night away and broke over the mountains.

The journey back to the FOB was as surreal as it had begun, and a quick glance at her watch showed that barely three hours had come and gone since the time the boss had stepped into the medic tent to wake her up.

But everything else moved on automatic—the leap up the helicopter, the boss's close eye on her, which hadn't escaped her notice, the bumpy ride back—, dulled to a numbing shade of grey that disconnected and disengaged her from reality.

The lads were in considerable spirits in contrast, their loud voices and nonsensical talk—from bangers and mash for breakfast to the next mail shipment—displaying what they all thought had been a successful mission. She, on the other hand, didn't know where to start, only managing to add in her feeble two pennies' worth of insults when one of the fuckmuppets brazenly suggested using the boss's paddling pool to cool down.

Only the quick grin that the bossman himself levelled on her had briefly drenched the world in a bright swath of colour, the impassiveness of the way he'd regarded her over the past few days disappearing behind that flash of emotion.

She focused instead on her breathing, counted each inhale and exhale, until they were back on the ground and she was alone in the med tent and sorting out the things in the med bergen when Kinders summoned her to back to the ops tent.

Only Beck and James stood around the table, their hushed discussion coming to a halt when she entered and stood up straight, immediately reading the tension in the lines around the boss's eyes and the deep frown that marred his forehead.

"As you were."

"What's going on, Sir?"

The boss nodded at a pile of wrinkled papers and the scattered photos at the end of the table, his face an inscrutable mask.

"We count tonight's raid a success, Private Dawes," Beck paused and threw a sharp, significant look at her. "The ASF retrieved documents that have provided a clearer picture of what we should expect of this Taliban cell."

Dread weighed down her limbs as she forced herself to the side of the table, hesitantly picking up the heap of them.

Letter-sized printouts in Pashto, with the English translation scribbled out next to the most important headings.

She flipped through more of those, until it became clear that she was looking at a crude tabulation of quantity and price.

"Opium production. The crop that funds Taliban activities. But that's not the most important part."

Placing the papers down, she got on to the photos, scanning through images of the Afghan countryside and its mountain passes, of the chaos of Kabul and bearded men who hurried through the crowds—

What was it really, that they wanted her to see?

The seemingly nondescript details of Afghan life faded into the background when the last stack of photos came up.

Blurred images of her, with Two Section in the background on several of their routine patrols at the village border filled the frame awkwardly, as though the photographer hadn't quite managed to master the zoom function on the camera from a distance.

"I don't understand, Sir."

"They're surveillance photos, Dawes, taken from a sniper's vantage point. Retrieved from the raid along with the documents. Major Beck and I came to the same conclusion that you had to be informed of the situation we're in. The latest intelligence reports from Bastion suggest that Taliban activity has altered after a recent spate of suicide bombings in the East and Southeast of Afghanistan."

The implications were starting to sink in, but it still all lay about like a puzzle she couldn't exactly reconstruct without either of them filling in the gaps.

The boss's next words had the familiar taste of panic souring her throat.

"After the incident with Bashira, we think they have you in their sights."


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: I've always seen 'Our Girl' (series 1!) as a military drama—with a dash of romance and huge chemistry between the leads who made me happy when they finally did end up together. Likewise, I wanted to keep my own short fics in the spirit of S1 (more army stuff) and maybe give a more…loaded interpretation of CJ/Molls as they fight their attraction until it all finally caves in. There's no way I want M/CJ to meander towards S2's kind of drama after Kenya, at least not in that way, so it's going to stay military and in Afghanistan._

 _There isn't, hence, that much to play with in terms of plot when sort of sticking to canon (except to play the 'what-if' game a bit with several important events in the series), so the conversations and settings do sort of revolve around similar topics that already come up in the show and I still somehow feel I need to apologise for the rinse and repeat here._

{…}

"Our work at the FOB is done and our transfer back to Bastion is scheduled just as the ANA takes back control of the region. But this particular piece of intel complicates our withdrawal."

Her thoughts had stuttered to a halt and her hands had started to shake—her body's sole recourse of dealing with the numbing shock of the revelation when the boss's and Beck's words finally sank in.

Like a fish out of water, she was out of her depth and unable to swim. Only military protocol upheld by muscle memory kept her ramrod straight.

She swallowed hard, tried to take it all in and voiced the only question that had risen above the panic. "What do I do then?"

The boss and Beck exchanged a grim look.

"The unfortunate reality, Private Dawes, is nothing for now. Not when ISAF's withdrawal coincides with increased Taliban activity." The keen edge in Beck's voice was the only hint of the frustration that he conveyed, along with the pen that was restlessly tossed from hand to hand. "There's nothing we can or must do until we hear from HQ and the further intelligence they will relay, despite our repeated calls to depart earlier for Bastion. I'm afraid the big decisions are out of our hands."

Take it like a solider, he meant. As though nothing were more at stake than a routine patrol going wrong and dealing with it accordingly. It was the complete opposite of how her family would have reacted—probably fallen apart as much as she had—yet the terse, austere way the army did it all provided a measure of calming comfort that broke the tasks down into manageable portions when emotions failed. A step at a time, an order to obey—all energy channelled where it was supposed to go; no wonder delinquents could turn from outcasts to heroes in a blink of an eye.

Not that the boss was a tosser who needed reform, but was that why he held the army regulations like his own personal commandments?

"There's something else. We need you to look carefully at the men in the photos and identify anyone you recognise."

"We haven't had too much contact with anyone here, boss. Unless you're asking about Bashira's father and—"

James's steady gaze caught her like a fly in a web. It all felt better when he was at her side, soothing the inexplicable ache that accompanied a rumbling that she couldn't explain.

"Take a peek, Dawes."

What the hell was going on? Why did it all feel like a test that she had to pass—

"Go on."

Taking three of the photos the boss handed to her—when he'd taken them from her wasn't a moment that had even registered—, she closed her eyes briefly, forcing the memory of Bashira's family back into the forefront.

A riot of colour forming the chaos of a marketplace filled the frame of the first photograph as a few women clad in abayas lingered at stalls accompanied by their brothers or husbands. Two men stood apart from the scene, their profiles blurred, staring past the edges of the photo at something that lay beyond the camera's lens.

None of them looked familiar.

The second photo was of the same marketplace shot from a different angle, the same two men now positioned on the left of the image. Larger, clearer, their attention on another man on the other side of the street who looked as though—

 _Impossible_.

She traced the small outline of the other man in the photo, noting the same olive skin, a thicker beard that made those shifty eyes less conspicuous and the familiar, contemptuous snarl on his lips each time he looked at her. Those features were burned in her memory, nothing that the traditional Afghan garb couldn't hide.

"That's…Sohail, innit? Why's he here?"

The tumble of questions kept coming as the confusion kept her hands at a slight tremble. Knocked so far off balance in the past few weeks, each shocking reveal of the bigger picture not doing much more than to add to the whole mess in her head.

"He's gone AWOL."

It wasn't as though she'd noticed, caught up in daily, exhausting grind of patrols, drills and PT. Thankful for the distraction and for the lack of death glares he gave, presumably for being female in a predominantly male camp.

That made little sense as she looked at the date stamped on the photograph. "And he's gone to Kabul instead?"

"His timely disappearance and the corresponding increase in Taliban activities are reasons to suspect him as the possible leak in the ANA network and as the informant in the local cell."

That Beck and the boss were shockingly forthcoming stunned her as much as the news about Sohail's status. Even more surprising perhaps, was the effort they'd gone into including her in the intelligence they'd received.

Beck gestured for the documents, which she willingly gave up, as though they'd tainted the air enough.

"A small number of Afghan Special Forces soldiers will be stationed here for now. There will be eyes on you the whole time and you will not be alone when Two Section go on patrol. Captain James will be by your side the whole time. Nothing will happen to you."

"I'm not leaving your side, Dawes." The boss's quiet words sounded suspiciously like a vow.

Their reassurances were quick, though it hadn't helped her building paranoia much. The thought of being a high-level target of the Taliban—an unknown, low-ranking British medic on her first tour—was terrifying, all because she'd attempted to start a friendship with Bashira because the kind of retaliation her innocent action had caused was just…shite getting too real to bear thinking about.

"Yes, Sir."

The chirp of the secure phone in the tent gave her the excuse to slip away, to make that slow trudge to the med tent—comprising a mere canvas opening and way more space she ever had growing up with a large boisterous family—where refuge lay.

Out of the ops tent, the dazzling sunlight against pure, unadulterated blue sky was a jarring contrast, already causing the outline of the mountains to shimmer in the heat mirage. The cockwombles of Two Section were already jostling for breakfast, the scent of coffee and fried eggs somehow revolting in the morning heat.

"Oi, Molls, scoff!"

Her head snapped up at Smurf's yell, then drooped slightly at the invitation.

Brains stepped out of the line in the mess tent, waving a sausage speared on a fork at her. "Hey, Dawes, there'll be none left if you don't fucking hurry!"

Exhaustion from the early morning strike and the whole business of Sohail's bleedin' loyalty warred with the sudden pangs of hunger she felt. The thought of food was both enticing and nauseating but the solitude of the tent would have to wait a while.

What hurt could a cup of tea do?

{…}

The hiss and sputter of the reliable coffee machine stuttered to a halt and the pathetic drizzle of Rosabaya into the mug was a sore reminder that he'd forgotten to add water before throwing the bloody coffee pod in.

James grabbed the tumbler on his desk, dumped the remainder of the water into the machine, then willed it to come alive when he jabbed the dispenser button again. Not even bloody Nespresso had done a thing to keep him awake, not after his adrenaline reserves had been spent on what felt like a seemingly endless stretch of meetings, paperwork and patrols.

Yet the restlessness lingered, writ a little too large in the stifling space of his personal tent until it closed the canvas walls in.

The urge to see Dawes was overwhelming, for the sole reason that he permitted himself to believe, was that she was a vital member of the team and her personal welfare had suddenly become of utmost importance.

The fact that she'd held up so well was beyond impressive, but he was better acquainted with soldierly facades than most. What was often said was done so to fulfil priorities and protocols and Dawes seemed to be learning this lesson too quickly.

With the early-tour dick waving and the posturing that accompanied the stupidity of men who didn't grow up, war tended beat it out of them in the most sobering way possible then left they dry and hanging, unable to cope in ways that civilians couldn't even begin to understand.

It'd happened with Dawes, as it'd done with Two Section. More the former than the latter, when the incident with Bashira had set in place a rolling juggernaut that threatened to pull them in over their heads. Morale had been utter shite and not even the scheduled mail deliveries had done a thing to alleviate the dour mood of the camp.

Two weeks of R&R would have done Dawes worlds of good and given her time to decompress. But army schedules, as rigid as they were, could and were thrown into disarray when people and things fucked up spectacularly. Yet…he'd never been more grateful to learn that it wasn't going to be a trip planned with Smurf.

James paced the short length of his tent twice, then headed out to the med tent, the coffee already forgotten. Until he spoke to Dawes—and ascertained _professionally_ that she was alright—, he wouldn't be able to assuage the unease that'd settled deep in his gut each time he looked at her.

He announced his presence simply by stepping in and making a show of it.

"So there you are, Dawes."

The strangled squeak of surprise that came from the side of the tent made him grin, loosening the knots she kept him in for most of the day. She was always where he found her of late, sorting through stuff on the table and on the bunk.

That Dawes could always be found was a reassurance he didn't take for granted.

"Where else would I be without a Starbucks and or a Topshop in bleedin' Afghan, Sir?"

The laugh that her smart-mouthed reply brought out of him was what he realised he'd missed. He had missed the strange _rightness_ of their easy, little conversations in and around the FOB about everything and nothing despite the dire circumstances that she'd inadvertently found herself in. Missed the normalcy of just the both of them talking as though they'd found their stride as Captain and newly-minted medic who had the common aim of keeping the lads afloat and in one piece before Bashira had blown up.

And…maybe even _missed_ her company just little more than he should beyond needing her expertise in dressing his blisters and taking care of everyone's slightest scrapes.

The wariness in her face showed, as though she was expecting him to be the bearer of more bad news.

"Is everything alright, Boss?"

The fucking truth was so far from _alright_ that he couldn't even begin to start.

Sarcasm was heavy in his reply. "Why wouldn't it be?"

Sarcasm was equally heavy in hers. "Telling the truth as always, Sir."

He was already toeing off his boots, opting instead for a different answer, one that both of them could handle.

"The truth," he emphasised with a wink, "Dawes, is that my blisters are ever in need of your tender loving care."

She'd stopped messing with the medical supplies and without a hitch in her movements, turned and faced him with a salve and bandages.

"And they smell proper nice too. Like I don't know that. But with them bruising like that, you'd be better off wearing stilettos and running round in them."

And there it was. Dawes could be counted on to lift his spirits even without trying too hard, even throwing in a reference to her first, disastrous PT session.

"I suppose I should be grateful then, for your suffering through them. Had some scoff?"

Her smile, however slight, was still a little wobbly. "A little. Most of it was in Dangle's stomach by the time I got to the tea."

"You'll need your beauty sleep and strength. Patrol at 0200 hours."

"I'll be ready, Sir. With extra bandages packed in the med bergen for your lady feet. Just cos' it's you, Boss."

Her small hands were warm on his feet, the salve cold in contrast, the rhythmic glide of her fingers making him flinch when the medication came into contact with the open wound.

He paused, needing her to hear this. "You really are something, Dawes."

The imperceptible widening of her eyes as she fought to understand what he was saying gave him the courage to go on. Suddenly, he wanted her to know what he'd seen on his previous tours, just so she knew how sodding _normal_ it really was to be messed up when the slightest thing didn't go according to plan and how survival was just another thing people managed because they were more resilient that they really were.

"On my second tour, we were headed to Bastion when the report came in. Insurgents had penetrated the external perimeter to launch an attack on the camp. We scrambled to join the ground troops to repel the attack based on whatever intelligence we could get."

The memory of that day had since faded some, paling in comparison to what he'd seen and done with Geraint Smith. But talking it out with Dawes was luring it out of the shadows where it lurked, untouchable as the deepest abyss until he'd begun poking at the beast.

"It was a right, fucking mess. Completely buggered. A huge embarrassment, now that you think of it." Now that he'd started, it was hard to stop the words from coming. Harder yet, was the effort to keep the cynical laugh from escaping now that he was revisiting that day he'd rather shore up in an untouchable part of his head.

"I heard of it, even before I joined the Army."

Who hadn't, really? The headlines of Bastion's attack had been plastered across the UK, the constant calls from his parents—and Rebecca—had him pulling the phones off the hook. His involvement, no matter how peripheral, had sent relatives and friends scrambling for any news he could dole out from a part of the world they had once shuddered to think about.

"We were unprepared, without tactical advantage, yet ordered to do whatever to prevent the insurgents from breaching the north-eastern part of the camp. I saw men falling apart, unable to accept that the impregnable Bastion had been breached and had taken some of their friends with them."

James looked up and met her eyes, unsurprised to see the steel reflected in them as she listened—the strength and compassion that weren't there when he had first threatened to lob her out of the plane at Brize Norton.

The only thing he omitted was that it'd shaken him up just as much when he found out that several of his good friends had numbered among those who'd fallen when Bastion fell. So much so that he hadn't been his usual self for a while back when the tour ended and Rebecca had finally walked.

"What did you do?"

It wasn't a confession he was ashamed to make. "I had a turn with a therapist sometime later. We all did. And I came out better because of it."

More than the domestic crisis that the attack had precipitated in his life, it'd also given him a crisis in confidence in the higher ups and in their discerning abilities to call the Helmand province into order after the battle of Bastion until therapy, time and reflection had helped set it back ship shape. Like the incident with Smurf's brother, Bastion itself had been another yoke around his neck that connoted failure.

And with it had come a precious lesson learned: to _not_ get emotionally involved, to have faith in the higher ups to do what was right and to soldier on. But Molly Dawes was made of a core of loyalty, compassion and naïveté and that was exactly what it'd taken for him to re-engage his brain and ruffle his calm.

"Therapy, eh, Boss?"

Dawes took a step back sharpish, as though disappointed, the remainder of the salve still white and glistening on his feet. His utter lack of understanding when it came to Dawes was as archetypal as her propensity to keep him unsettled without even trying, when that loss he felt of her withdrawal became too acute to ignore.

"I know that, Sir. I will—"

Her hand was in his before she could retreat any further, their fingers entwining on an impulse he couldn't fight, just before common sense overrode him and wrenched back that control.

Once again, he found himself jerking away, his hands falling to his side, fists already clenched from the effort of keeping them steady.

"Dawesy, I didn't tell you that so you'd be convinced get therapy. I just wanted you to know that you aren't the first to feel like this. Won't be the last either."

The short laugh she gave him was self-deprecating, a pale shadow of the feisty smirk and comebacks that had long ago taught Two Section she could handle herself.

But how could he explain something he didn't even really understand?

That the soldiers he'd served with had a special shared history amongst themselves was a given, but the idea that he'd apparently found a connection with this replacement medic sounded ludicrous even in his own head. With Dawes as always, it was akin to standing at the edge of a high cliff with the roiling sea with an unseen enemy that pressed in at his back, where to choice to stay where he stood merely prolonged the agony of hesitation before he fell into its depths.

She dipped her chin, looking shattered when he'd pulled away. "You don't have to take care of me that way, Boss. I've reached a point in my life where I can do that on me own."

He gave her a sheepish look. "You'll live to fight another day, Dawes. But I meant what I said earlier. I'm not leaving your side."

"I won't either, Sir. I swear."

The clarity with which she returned that promise was staggering, yet the slight pull of the frown on her face sent him floundering to make sense of it all.

The confusion was almost…painful as he hopped off the cot and pulled on his boots, needing that distance as much now as he'd needed to see her just a mere ten minutes ago. Just as the recognition of that identical emotion in her eyes splintered his thoughts.

"Right then. Get some rest, Dawes. You need it."


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: The battle of Bastion is real. I wrote James rather conveniently into it in the last chapter as the timing seemed appropriate, in addition to help sort of 'shape out' my idea of who CJ really is apart from what we've been given in S1._

 _On a side note, it just occurred to me that I should bloody give a better summary of this story. Not having a clue where it was going to lead when I first started writing it is my poor excuse for it. And now that I have a better inkling of how it should be getting on, I really should put something down that's more than just some fancy-sounding 1-liner that says rubbish about what 'Kindling' is. Uh. Soonish._

 _Now, onwards with this bit that was so incredibly difficult and exhausting to write. I wanted a different take on how M/CJ might get around to finally admitting they mean something to each other and for some reason, this took an unexpected turn. I can only hope it lives up to your expectations._

{…}

The Corps of Army Music was nowhere to be found, but that hadn't stopped Two Section from butchering every rendition of Adele's or Amy Winehouse's latest hit as Dangles fought to keep up with the wankers who sang off-key and danced around him.

Entertainment night had gone straight to the dogs as she sat there doubled over in hilarity.

"Hey Molls, ever heard the Bossman's favourite song?"

Baz's seemingly innocent question gave her pause. The idea that James actually had one stumped her. For so long he was to her, all things military and tactics; to think of him as a person who had a favourite _anything_ was yet another piece of James that she hadn't had access to at all.

Two Section broke out simultaneously in clapping, whoops and off-key humming.

"It's a _duet_!"

Mansfield Mike's complaint was louder than the bloody wankers' hooting. "He made me sing the female bit once."

Her face was starting to hurt from smiling. "I've no bloody clue what you cockwombles are on about."

"He only sang it throughout training, says Kinders, ya know."

"Sir Elton's to blame for it."

"Dangles, cue it!"

"Who's singin' with me? A job shared's a job halved. Maybe the boss'll hear and come join us."

Only God knew where Mansfield got the pink feather boa from, but he held it twirled around his neck as the opening bars of 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' came through the speakers.

Some things didn't change. At least, Molly hoped this mad group of lads letting loose sans beer always stayed that way. War might be waged outside the flimsy barriers of this compound, but the laughter and the brief reprieve it gave from the trying circumstances they were in was slowly teaching her how to count the smaller blessings.

A slight hand squeeze pulled her from her musings and she turned to see Smurf settling beside her on the far end of the stage away from Two Section's antics.

"Alright or what, Molls?" He winked exaggeratedly, then pointed up at the sky. "Fate's thrown us together. Again."

"Fate? More like you chose to plonk your arse here."

His grin was unrepentant. "I'd still say it's fate."

She leaned back slightly into the structure that held up the dais, sobering immediately. "All that talk of fate and lady luck. Sounds like you're just another follower of the boss."

"It ain't funny, Molls. All that talk of fate? Sometimes it seems like it's just another way to talk about dying. My mum's been shitting me up as it is since Geraint died." Smurf plucked at a stray thread at the hem of his shorts, as though embarrassed by the admission. "She's got premonitions and stuff, thinks I'm next in line."

His sudden mood swing startled her, unless it was just a rant that was a long time in coming.

It wasn't as though her own parents weren't worried, but they had enough to deal with that they probably had no time to think too much about her situation. Their letters and parcels at least, hadn't mentioned that much; mum missed her massively but it never quite felt like the huge worry Candy had for Smurf.

"You're just being a regular soldier, Smurf."

"Exactly what I said. But she thinks Afghan is the worst place on earth to be."

"Do you believe what she says?"

"Haven't got a clue what to believe." The wild-eyed, scowling look he gave her was cause in itself for worry. "Look, she even gave me her ring."

"A ring?"

"Engagement ring. Reckoned she didn't need it anymore. Told me to give it to a girl I love, cos' there might not be a tomorrow to do that."

The paleness in his face made her draw a sharp breath. Not that she could fully understand his mother's extreme worry that was edging into paranoia but clearly, Smurf didn't seem to be dealing with this all too well.

"She sounds proper worried, Smurf. And you best not mention this to the rest. But mate, you know Captain James will do everything he can to bring us all back safe."

He fidgeted, caught up in his own nervous energy, his fingers restlessly busy. "Molls, about that ring, would you—"

She was already shaking her head, her interruption timed so that that he didn't have to finish that sentence for both their sakes.

"I ain't wearing it, if that's what you're asking. A night in the alleyway doesn't qualify me for that. And you bloody well know it."

He laughed as if he knew his directness was disorienting, the desperate plea in his face finally fading to something of a grimace, even if his shoulders stayed hunched.

"Just needed to try though, eh?"

Just as bossman had done for her, she now wanted to extend those same reassurances to him. A mate deserved no less. "Now you're just letting your mum get to 'ya. Smurf, don't worry, alright? Fob off those scary thoughts."

His disparaging snort was harsh in her ears. "Did you ever wonder if I'd called you after that night how different we—"

 _Shit_. Not this now.

As far as she was concerned, that night was yet another regret she'd tried to put behind her and Smurf's constant presence in the platoon was the only roadblock in the way of it. But he was only talking out of his arse, asking her out of a fear that he couldn't reason away.

"Smurf, go back to Newport after this. Find a nice girl. Someone who deserves you and makes you happy."

He gave her a sharp, lingering look, then blew out a loud sigh. "Wonder how James deals with all this shit. On his fourth tour, being away so much. Must be hell on his family too. But maybe Ruperts are in a class of their own, eh, Molls?"

The abrupt switch in subject left her reeling. "You off your nut? What are you on about?"

"Just saying they're not all bloody plonkers, you know? He's got so much more on his plate to handle than all of us I reckon, with a wife and son waiting back home. Or is it his ex-wife? Who knows how he sorts that out. Wonder how difficult it must be for them."

Reality as she knew it tilted on its side like a pair of wheels skidding hard on black ice then turning turtle, the casual revelation as good as a hit to the face or a kick in the stomach.

Smurf's words sank in gradually, through the mire of shock and disbelief that temporarily blanked everything out. With glacial slowness, the indistinct shape of the stage came back into view, the sounds of Two Section's fooling around finally rising above the roaring in her ears and the sharp burn of tears in her eyes.

It was a strain to keep her voice even as she fought to swallow the news and struggled to keep the disappointment, the sheer embarrassment and the unjustified hurt from seeping through.

"His…wife? And son?"

Smurf wasn't looking at her, his attention seemingly still fixed on the multitude of stars dotting the clear night sky. "You didn't know? I saw her once. At Geraint's memorial service. A real posh lady, speaks like the boss," he told her absently as he fiddled once again with the loose thread. "Not that she said much though."

Torn between wanting to hear more about the boss's wife and needing Smurf to shut up, she found she hadn't the words to say a thing.

How had she gotten it so wrong?

James had promised never to leave her side, but it had been as professional as it'd come. The night when he'd woken her up, he'd jumped away as though he'd touched a live wire when she'd stumbled into him—he'd fought the pull and retreated. Just as he did each time there was accidental contact between them.

Lovely.

It had been her who'd coloured more meaning into those words and actions than there was ever meant to be. Or perhaps, the more painful truth was that she hadn't known James at all, apart from knowing him as the Commanding Officer who called Two Section into order, told war stories, poked fun at their mail and generally did his work to get them back alive. Smurf had merely provided oblique but cutting reminders of the different worlds they lived in and would return to when this tour was over.

He hadn't said a damn thing about his family, but why would he need to, really?

The assumption she'd made about the boss becoming as… _fond_ of her as she was of him had been a fantasy loosely woven purely out of delusional dreams. So loose that Smurf had simply come by and taken it apart with words, leaving nothing but the shards of a hope that should have never even existed.

The slight shake on her shoulder brought her out of her stupor.

"Uh, you alright? Cos' you shipped out for a moment."

"I'm fine. Just…thinkin'." _Just absolutely gutted._

"No, you ain't." He gave her with an incredulous scowl. "You crying there, Molls?"

"No! I…it's just…this is hard, you know? When I think about—" she gestured lamely around just to get his scrutiny off her, "—what we're doing and all. Gets me a bit soppy."

Her answer was ground out through her teeth, laden with meaning that Smurf didn't—couldn't—catch.

"Been a hard one so far." His agreement was quick, his acceptance of her answer thankfully easy and distracted, especially when Fingers came bounding over with the invitation for them to join some sort of food war that had already started in the mess tent. "And that's why we have entertainment night or whatever you want to call it."

Fingers grinned at them. "Coming, Molly?"

It was easy to decline. "Already ate. Besides, the sight of you fuckmuppets eating everything in sight will only make me sick."

She watched from a distance as the lads loaded up their plates, Brains refereeing with a whistle and a clipboard, then stood and walked off.

By the time the last plate of food was finished, she was long ensconced in the medic tent with her eyes pinched shut, knowing sleep wouldn't come.

{…}

"Dawes. Full-kit, straight to the Ops tent, sharpish."

She was already scrambling into her combat uniform as Kinders issued the terse order through the med tent. The advantage of not being able to get any sleep made her faster than the rest of the section in getting ready. But most of the ops and patrols in the past few weeks had taken place at night, which wrecked havoc on the body's sleep cycle.

Pure adrenaline drove her to her feet, made everything lighter than it was as she ran to the ops tent for the briefing that had to surely mean an unexpected strike was supposed to happen.

The sight of the boss however, was a sharp, physical ache, impossible to brush aside as he nodded briskly at her. But she was unable to think past Smurf's accidental revelation of the bossman's family status that had thrown her so far out at sea that she still struggled to stay afloat.

"Sir."

The ASF soldiers already lined the opening of the tent next to a bank of monitors, taking their orders from Taj who spoke in rapid-fire Pashto. Two Section filed in—most of them breathless—as the ASF marched out, sombre and alert even at this ungodly hour and took their places on the bench as they awaited their orders.

On the white screen behind Major Beck, the projector beamed a chalky-looking aerial view of a different mountain pass, its jagged peaks and valleys sharp filling most of the frame in the high contrast photo, punctuated only by a cluster of mud-brick buildings in the southwest corner. The vital information of the target location ran down the side of the image, listing ground temperature, elevation and coordinates.

"At 0300, the ASF, acting on intelligence from Bastion, will be raiding a suspected Taliban compound 53 miles from the FOB under Captain Taj. Two Section with Captain James and the ANA with Captain Azizi, will provide perimeter defence. The targeted cell is reported to contain high-level suspects and their capture will significantly weaken the network in the Helmand province."

The brief pause between slides on the projector plunged the tent into darkness before the stark portrait of a bearded man lit the space once again.

"Abdul Zahir Nafez."

Beck clicked on. "Yousef Shah Ahmadi."

 _Click_. A brief pause.

"Sohail Khel Jalani."

Across the space of the tent, she felt James's eyes on her, the weight of his stare. She didn't know what to make of it, not understanding the sort of message he was trying to fob off on her, apart from the hurt that had been unwittingly self-inflicted by her own ignorance and gullibility.

Beck relayed his final instructions, his sharp tone drawing her attention back to the screen and to the frozen picture of Sohail.

 _Click._

A close-up of the compound and the environment into which it had been built flashed on the screen, with the op's details scrawled on the side of the scanned image.

The boss walked to the side of the projector, taking over.

"Under the cover of darkness, we'll be dropped three kilometres from the compound. The terrain is rocky and steep on all sides and the path to the compound is treacherous. From there, we'll clear this distance in twenty minutes to set up perimeter defence on the east side of the compound. Fire support will be on standby. Any questions?"

The well-timed chorus came loud and clear. "No, Sir!"

"We're all in the clear." Beck spoke again, "Be reminded that this is a covert operation and another pre-emptive strike because of increased Taliban activity in the region."

The Major's assessing gaze fell on hers, then moved on to every soldier gathered in the tent.

"You leave immediately."

{…}

In near pitch darkness, staying on point took greater effort when sight was limited.

James gritted his teeth against the cold bite of the mountain air that stung the exposed skin of his face and fingers as the helicopter banked and accelerated. Gravitational force did its work, pressing him back into the hard surface of the bench and shoulders-to-hips into Dawes, who sat between him and Baz.

Another night, another raid…another bout of adrenaline rush. But it never got routine as the regular patrols did because of the risks that came with working alongside the ASF and the unpredictability of the intel they acted upon.

Mentally, he thrived. Fatigue might have been scored deep into every muscle after very few hours of sleep each day, but being so operational in a tiny FOB with a young platoon on watch had finally given this tour a sharp sense of purpose that the last two had blunted considerably.

Emotionally, he was past stretching point, struggling with a medic he didn't know what to do about. More specifically, whom he didn't quite know how he _felt_ about, because it seemed as though formulating an articulate thought on his emotions when it came to Dawes and his failed marriage would make it a truth he couldn't yet acknowledge.

Instinctively, he tightened his grip on his rifle and forced his focus outward. Took in the barely visible tree line from where it sheared off on the steep side of the mountain, then ran through the intel and the plans with a fine-toothed comb as the helicopter banked again and made its descent.

The situation ran far too dangerously for him to lose his concentration now.

The comm buzzed in his ear at the same time the helicopter's landing skids hit the ground, providing the final signal from Taj before the ASF began their assault run of the compound.

His own order was terse and sharp. "Go."

His boots hit the ground and then he was running, his breaths shockingly loud in his ears as the dirt path wound narrowly upwards and hugged the steep face of the cliff. Through his night vision scope, the land shone an eerie, luminous green, the shapes of Two Section and the ANA platoon moving along his only slight gradations in colour.

Dawes was right behind, her own pants loud as she kept up with his paces.

The sudden blast of Pashto and gunfire that followed in a split second through the comm was the first sign that things had just gone pear-shaped.

The high-pitched whistling—of a higher frequency than the wind's howl—picked up at the last second. High above, the helicopters that'd brought them here were already buffeted in the wind that blasted down the side of the mountain, struggling, spiralling, in their ascent—

 _Fuck._

"Down! RPG!"

 _Ambush._

A distance away, Kinders was yelling, barely audible above the screams of the lads.

The fireball lit the sky, the explosion echoing through the valley, very nearly blowing his ears out.

He threw himself down, scrunched up into a position as protective as his bulky equipment would allow his body. Felt rather than saw Dawes do the same. Propelled backwards by the shockwave, he finally turned only to see several ANA soldiers who were closer to the blast tumbling over the ravine while the rest scarpered for purchase and cover.

"Contact, wait out!"

The sharp edge of the rock caught the side of his head and ribs hard as the heat from supercharged metal swept away the chill of the mountain air. For those long, drawn-out seconds, night became day as fiery debris rained over the trees, registering in his night vision scope so vividly that it branded his retinas.

And then there were voices…calling, shouting, moaning…shadows emerging out of smoke and fire, the aftermath of a catastrophe that could well resemble hell on earth.

"Stay down!"

Already, the bitter, acrid taste of smoke from the destroyed vegetation and the mangled, burning mess of the helicopter filled his throat. Swallowing hard and swiping at his watering eyes, he contacted the FOB for immediate evacuation, yelling their location and situation, then left Beck to handle the airlift and medevac.

And where the fuck was Dawes?

Time stilled and froze as he'd frozen in sudden panic. He wouldn't know what to do if she bled out on Afghan soil, the very numbing horror of it clawing to take root in his mind.

He twisted from where he sprawled, still dizzy from the hit but too frantic in his search for her to realise the sticky wetness that ran down the side of his face.

All he needed right now, was Dawes. Not Two Section. Not until he knew she was getting back alive and kic—

"Sir!"

"Dawes!"

Anchored by her voice, he crawled in her direction, his racing heart finally slowing.

He found Dawes in a half-kneeling position a few metres away from where the blast had thrown them, her helmet askew, her face caked thickly with dirt and grime. But all he could take in was the desperate relief on her face that mirrored his and somehow he'd found his palms already on her cheeks, her gloved hands coming up to grip his wrists tightly to keep them there—astonishingly needing that slight bit of intimate contact as much as he did, no matter how inappropriate it was.

They were soldiers on a mission, stuck deep in enemy territory, yet he couldn't let her go.

The fucking irony of it.

"You alive there, Dawes?"

He allowed his eyes to roam her face, permitted himself the small comfort of touch. She was shaken, stirred, massively bruised but so very, very alive and miraculously unhurt.

Her whispered answer was for him alone. "Yes, Boss. I have all me parts."

He sucked in a sharp breath, bereft of words for a long moment that could have spanned an eternity for all he cared. By sheer strength of will he took his hands off her face and mentally shook himself hard.

"Good. The rest need to be sorted. So go be brilliant."

{…}

They were done way after sunrise, knackered, filthy and shell-shocked, with Dawes the only medic on the battlefield holding the fort steady with military triage until the MERTs and their transport back appeared over the horizon.

Unable yet to account for their losses, James had assessed Two Section's combat readiness, found them scraped and bruised, though Smurf's broken leg in two places and Brain's concussion meant they were off to Bastion, then Birmingham and off duty until it was sorted out in the white-washed walls of the hospital.

The ANA had fared less better, as had the ASF team that had lost a few team members in the assault that had gone fubar in seconds.

Absolute chaos wouldn't even have been appropriate to describe what he saw in the FOB.

The injured had been airlifted to Bastion, reinforcements suddenly pouring in after the higher ups had deemed this ambush a heightened security risk, even if it was only temporary. The medic tent had a constant stream of soldiers who were draining both the medic and her resources dry.

The ANA had regrouped, as had the ASF, though their numbers were considerably reduced after the false trail that'd led to the ambush the compromised intelligence had so conveniently laid out for them.

The leak in the ANA then, had been way deeper than the ISAF had assumed; Sohail's disappearance had merely been the tip of the iceberg where Taliban infiltration was concerned. What it mean for the FOB, Two Section's station or the transfer to Bastion, he hadn't a bloody clue.

Beck had called some semblance of order, given a debrief, visibly torn between getting them back to duty and to doss down as soon as they were able.

Whatever the fuck it was for now, James had reached the end of his tether. He'd felt the tiny tectonic shift that meant he should kindly remove himself from the whole mess before he allowed the anger that'd been simmering to come to a boil since he'd done the body count and the injury-list many hours ago.

Before they decided to strip the rank off him for throwing a fit, he knew he bloody needed to walk out of the ops tent. The culmination of exhaustion, the ambush, the recent spate of incidents with the Taliban cell and mile-high reports he'd had to go through and write had done that.

Right now, he needed to muster up some trust in Beck and the other commanders to unravel the jumbled mess while he took a shower and spent a few hours in blessed oblivion that would get his head clear—assuming that would even happen with the recent events still playing a noisy, cruel loop behind his eyelids.

He threw a towel over his shoulder, then gripped the end of it tightly when he made his way to the shower stalls that were thankfully empty.

The sting of pain on his face and his side as the water did its work—and long forgotten by the time they'd returned to the FOB—was a reminder that he still needed to see Dawes for salve. For a moment, he simply stood there, blindly watching the suds swirl and wash from the roughly-hewn stone and into the cracks of the ground, fighting the urge to do it all over again to get cleaner.

He'd only managed to towel-dry his hair and pull on a fresh pair of trousers when Dawes's head popped around past his tent's flap.

"Boss?"

The wariness was back in her face, the openness he'd briefly glimpsed on that precarious mountain path a mere memory; in fact, the veracity of which he would have doubted had he still not felt the warmth of her skin that seemed to be permanently imprinted on his palms.

She stepped in, eyes averted, laying down the bandages and pills that she thought he needed.

"You'll need these, Sir. I'll check you over and you'd be fit for bed."

He paused, somehow wanting to prolong this moment with her. "Want a cup of tea, Dawes?"

"Never stopped drinking since we got back. Would be the first person to be pissed on tea if I could." Her smirk appeared, then faltered. "Not that you have any real tea to offer."

Rummaging through his first drawer, he grabbed what he was looking for, then triumphantly dangled a dusty-looking bag with the Waitrose tag still attached to it.

"Still mocking me?"

She laughed, her attempt at snatching the tea bag out of his hand thwarted only by his superior height. "Wouldn't dare, Boss."

"I'm ordering you straight to the bunk after this."

Her sigh was resigned. "Yes, Sir. That's one order I'm actually thankful for."

He grinned, then sat heavily on the chair next to his desk, which had her leaning cautiously over him to examine the wound. He watched her economical movements, stilted and almost reluctant, the unsettling idea that Dawes was on the path of avoidance growing too massive to ignore.

"Head wounds bleed more than usual but you're going to be just fine. Even superficial ones like yours do because of the number of blood vessels in—"

He went straight to the point, ignoring the litany of warnings ringing in his head.

"What's happening with you, Dawes?"

She looked as shattered as he felt, like a million regrets now weighed on her as she retreated hastily from the edge of a breakwater just as a hurricane made landfall. The Dawes he'd known so far ran headlong into the eye of the storm with her bleeding heart hanging on her sleeve as it flopped dangerously in the winds that threatened to destroy it.

But there was still something so off-kilter about their interaction that he couldn't fully attribute to combat stress and tiredness, as they transitioned from easy to awkward in a matter of seconds.

And it baffled the life out of him.

"Just knackered, Sir. As you said I was."

The shock of her fingers on the side of his head had him jerking forward, her slight touch forcing their incendiary connection back to the surface. Instinct made him grab her wrist, the impulsive move making them both freeze.

He speared her with a hard look. "Bollocks."

Her response was dry, feisty…and practiced. "Can't swallow the truth?"

"No. Because you're not telling it."

She shook her hand free of his, retreating to the far side of his tent in a hasty step. "Let go of me, Sir. Your _wife_ wouldn't like it."

Bewilderment morphed into understanding in a millisecond at her sudden odd turn, stripping clean any reservations he'd ever carried about how she'd looked at him. The peripheral worry he'd been shouldering about being a crutch for the post-traumatic stress Dawes suffered vanished at her skittishness at his marital status rather than the ranks that separated them.

Whatever he'd ever accomplished in Sandhurst and after three hard tours of Afghan when it came to emotional involvement, it had only taken that particular telling reaction for the wool to be pulled from his eyes.

He had so far gone past infatuation for Dawes and apparently, so had she.

It was an acknowledgement that, once he'd given in, proved so revoltingly freeing as well as terrifying, precipitated against all odds, by that moment of sheer terror on that mountain that had wiped clean the slate and redefined his personal rules of engagement where fluke took the same name as fate.

The oppressive fear that had plagued him finally took flight, shattering the rigid control that gave up its ghost the moment he admitted he'd been that yellow-bellied coward with his own unruly emotions.

"We've split up. Separated. My _ex-wife_ walked after my second tour. I volunteered to come to Afghan for the fourth time so she could sort things out." The facts were given mechanically, but his words were deliberate, as were his advancing steps towards her until they stood with barely an inch between them. "I have a son. He's part of my life. Can I say though, your news is old news. But _that_ isn't exactly what you've wanted to hear from me, _innit, Dawes_?"

After the long night and morning, civility wasn't commodity he could summon at will, the levity that had defined the medic-commanding officer relationship suddenly absent after what they'd _both_ inadvertently revealed in the subtext that needed no deciphering. And there was only one way to see if Dawes would give as good as she got.

"No, Sir."

He noted the defiant jut of her chin, recognising her participation in this dangerous game he'd just dealt out.

He pressed on, undeterred. "Then let's call this a defining moment, Molly. What do you want?"

Her brief hesitation revealed nothing. There were a million replies she could have given—all of them or none of them army-related at all in response to his deliberately vague question—and the truth was that he didn't know where Dawes would lead them after he'd given her his place at the helm. Instead, her fingers ghosted over the angles of his face down to his bare chest, their chosen path obliterating the distant ache he felt each time she came close, stealing the breath from his lungs.

Her whispered answer spiked his pulse.

"For the longest time, boss, I've only wanted you."

She stepped into him and their lips crashed together, the fire between them raging hot enough to rival the burning mountain they'd fled from.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: I've never done a story like this before, where the limited roles of a Captain (in leading field operations or hostage rescue or target retrieval at least) and an inexperienced medic—unlike the Special Forces soldiers who do have more exciting and dangerous lives—tend to limit the kind of outlandish adventures I'd love to write about Molls and James._ _As much as I wish he could run off and play hero like Bond, I don't think that's how James was ever meant to be portrayed._

 _But these restrictions do translate into restrictions in POV as well—and what I did instead was to focus on how the traumatic events have changed M/CJ—, so forgive me if it becomes repetitive. We're really nearing the end—the story ends just as their first tour together ends and it won't go past Afghan, so let's hope they'll get their act together amidst brewing trouble._

{…}

He moved fast, that much Molly would give…and take. Backing her up against the hard surface of his desk with a back-step then a whirl, for which he deserved an award for smoothness.

She gasped at the blast of desire, the urgently-building need.

Adrift in sensation, they devoured and tasted, letting the raw hunger and heat burn out before the kiss turned exploratory with a sensual bite that had them desperately whirling to find traction against the closest vertical surface. Yet their hands couldn't stop wandering; hers all over his bare, taut torso and his creeping under her top until the each bold, sweeping caress felt like a scorching brand on her skin.

She swayed, her feet unsteady, held upright only by a firm hand over her waist. Lust and extreme fatigue made a potent and lethal drink that was intoxicating and reckless, barely losing out over the set of army regulations that hung over both their heads.

The concession must have entered his mind the same time it did hers because the boss pulled away reluctantly, but it was only to press their foreheads together, weaving their fingers tightly in a bid to keep the tangible evidence of their connection that neither wanted fully broken.

She blinked at the sudden smallness of the tent when her heart rate had finally normalised.

"Now's not the time, Dawes," he whispered regretfully against her lips, the simple intimacy he offered so far removed from the dangerous edge she'd witnessed when he'd deliberately taunted her into wading into waters she had never dared stepped into before. "You're knackered and so am I. After you get to bed and wake up with a clearer head, I can only hope this isn't what you'll start calling a moment of madness."

Disbelief made her sputter. If she's been any less clear, he would have to be a bloody idiot with no emotional reading of women at all.

"Me? Pointing your finger at the wrong 'un, boss."

But perhaps it was as he said, a moment of madness best forgotten, given this short but beleaguered history of theirs for dancing around but never getting anywhere. Yet this desperation to know if they were on the same footing was as mortifying as it was stupid.

Story of her life. With the boss, it always got painfully obvious just how unequal they were.

He drew back a little, shocking her with the openness in his face. There was warmth instead, in his eyes, in the beginnings of a smile on his lips and in the feel of his hands on her face. So much warmth and affection in fact, infused into every touch, overwriting the painful doubt that Smurf's damaging words about Ruperts and wives and sons had done, surpassing Artan's hypocritical definition of love as well—the kind that chased the deep winter gloom away and made her forget the horrors of Afghan.

It was captivating, disarming...mesmerising, even.

"I was afraid." His pause was substantial. "Not anymore."

The Molly Dawes of yesteryear would have pranced on. In a few short months, her first actual tour in Afghanistan had done everything to tear down that girl, shaping a very different person in its wake. Confident in areas that she'd never been before, utterly unsure in others. Doubt was now a constant, as was the newfound appreciation for mindless routines, PT sessions and patrols which sort of helped keep the post-traumatic stress at bay.

"Well, maybe I'm afraid you'd regret what you're sayin' now come morning, boss. We've had a terrible night. As a medic, I know what trauma can do to a person."

He tugged her closer instead, an action that spoke louder than words. "Dawes. Didn't you hear what I just said?"

The exasperation that tinged his voice made her laugh. "But—"

"Though I do recall a similar time not too long ago when you fell into my arms. I most certainly didn't regret that. Now admittedly, it was a surprise, but not an unwelcome one."

The wry reference to the blanket incident made her laugh. Easing into familiar banter was infinitely easier to deal with, putting them on more solid ground that didn't crumble easily when tested.

"As I recall, you were shittin' yourself when that happened and went off like a firecracker."

"I'm not now, am I?"

But the telling difference was that he didn't pull away now. Not even to pick up the silly posh but stale tea bag that'd fallen halfway to the ground if he wanted a convenient excuse to avert his gaze and make excuses for the impromptu snog.

As though he'd read her mind, he winked, retrieved the tea bag and tucked it into her pocket. "We'll take a consensus on that, Dawes."

The bloody cheek of him.

For a moment, they both stared at the dusty tea bag, the object that'd been the catalyst for this very moment.

"Thanks for the best tea ever then."

"You're alright, Dawes. Off with you."

"Sir."

She forced herself to look at him and while it wasn't a hardship at all, it was a medic's professional assessment that he probably needed as well, as much as Two Section did.

And honestly, he looked…bleedin' awful. Bloodshot eyes, unruly hair and the shadows of the day before that haunted them both casting a worn, weary droop on the stubbled, chiselled features that were still, to her, unfairly perfect. But there were also scrapes, bruises and some bloodied skin from the mad scramble that needed tending.

"Not yet. Not till I look you over."

"I thought you just did. But if you insist, look your fill. Want my pants off too?"

His droll answer made her grimace, then grin. Bloody Rupert. A cursory pat-down, another scrutiny of the injuries and she'd be done.

"I swear, sometimes you're as big a cockwomble as the rest of the blokes, Sir."

"Exactly what my mother said as well when I was growing up, Dawes. I've a feeling both of you will get along famously."

The smug, confident look he sported made her strangely flustered. "Bit previous there, ain't ya, boss?"

He took one of her hands in his, interlaced their fingers and brought it to his lips. That distant, hard look was back in his eyes, an incomprehensible contradiction to his action.

"Sleep tight, Dawes."

She didn't think she remembered her way back to the tent, or to the shower, or even to the mess tent for a cup of brewed tea that had a faded Waitrose label on it.

Even in her bunk, for once, she didn't dream of Bashira or of a violently disintegrating helicopter as people fell off a ravine. Out of the shadows, the boss emerged and stood in her dreams with her, their synced footprints heavy in the mud after a rare Afghan downpour.

{…}

"There has been a change of plans, Captain James. In light of recent events, we've all been recalled to Bastion."

Fucking hell. The news was a balm to his slowly fraying patience.

He shut his eyes briefly as relief hummed through his veins at Major Beck's very welcome order. The last week had been the absolute hardest of his army career and a repeat wasn't something he'd ever wish for.

"Yes, Sir."

Regrouping had been fucking difficult and admittedly something he wasn't at all accustomed to. The tiny FOB had been strained to capacity, the strategy meetings and debriefings endless, as tempers started to fray. James's included, though it resembled more of a silent stew than a hissy fit, which was more or less expected of the officers, bred at Sandhurst.

Treading the line between showing the ANA the respect they should deserve and wanting to tell them to sod off for the poor discipline in the ranks, Beck had simply put the call in for the higher ups to deal with the rot in the troops, then calmly arranged for an expedited transfer to the relative safety of Bastion. The ubiquitous red-tape and bureaucracy surrounding any insurgent movement because of the covert nature of the op meant that cleaning up after an ambush was when things truly went down the shitter. No one seemed to have a fucking clue about the bigger picture with the fluid movement of personnel and the leak that had become an unplugged hole—and it was his sole job right now to keep a diminished, demoralised platoon in line while intelligence and half-arsed updates trickled down like molasses through Beck's meetings.

Up until Beck's news, it had been a struggle to see beyond the confines of this tiny base—like a frog's vision of the sky from a well—, his trust in his own commanding officers already shaken by the cut and dried evidence that their mistakes had dire consequences he didn't yet know if he could accept. Having always functioned on the assumption that the intention rather than the execution mattered particularly in the military, he then trusted those decisions to be sound before putting his head down to follow them to the letter.

But too many men had died for this— _because_ of this and the grief and anger that rattled in his chest each time he thought about it hadn't gone away in the week that'd passed since then.

James called it a miracle that the report in his hand hadn't been shredded from the number of corrections he'd done on it, then worried about the repercussions of this entire incident on Two Section.

Only Dawes was the unexpected surprise that had given him the reprieve he never knew he needed, but also a potential reason for his loss of focus when he needed it right now. He'd wait out—and hoped she would as well, then chuffed a wry laugh when he realised nothing ever went according to plan especially Dawes came into the picture because to think otherwise was to gamble knowingly on the losing end.

A lesson that was learned the hard—and possibly the most rewarding—way.

Maybe she wouldn't. But who bloody knew?

Before he thought himself into a downward spiral of misery and uncertainty, he focused on getting Two Section together and giving them the good news after kitting up for patrol. As soon as he got down to it, their bloody cheers and hoots could have been heard a mile away, as expected.

Passing the fortified entry control point, he breathed easier once away from the claustrophobic space of the compound. The missing members of Two Section were now filled by a few of the ANA soldiers he'd never even seen before let alone trust, their makeshift ragtag group merely serving as a grim reminder of the yet-unknown extent of the Taliban's infiltration of the Afghan's military.

Just how much had they been compromised?

The crunch of the Section's boots on the pathway leading to the village shook him out of his thoughts. Forty yards ahead, the marketplace loomed, an abandoned dry patch of land at this time of the night. The houses, further down, were ghostly white shapes on the edge of his vision.

James stopped short, raising his rifle on instinct.

It was deathly quiet. The windows of all the houses had been boarded up and the doors tightly bolted shut, small slivers of light emanating from the tiny gaps between the doors and the ground of a handful of dwellings.

In the house on the far left, the quiet sobs of a child floated past the wooden slats. He saw a faint gleam of silver through a dirty window and long shadows that elongated under poor lighting.

An indistinct face peered through the small gap between a bullet-riddled wall and the hinge of a door, then withdrew into the darkness. Just like that, the memory of a terrified girl blown into bloody pieces slammed into him, her ragged, tear-stained face fracturing into a mess of blood and gore when the suicide vest blew.

The chill of the night wind that whistled through the village square raised the hairs on his skin, making him tighten his finger on the trigger on instinct.

They circled the village, then did it again. This time, all the lights in the houses were extinguished by the time they finished their second round. Highly unusual, but perhaps he was starting to read suspicious behaviour into things that weren't.

With a quick signal and a jerk of his head, James ordered them back the way they came.

A thorough perimeter check had done nothing to ease the tension that had settled on his shoulders. Half the patrol done with apparently nothing out of the ordinary but frightened villagers who'd not had their hearts and minds won over from the British Army's puny efforts and pen-giving opportunities.

Only when the FOB came within a quarter mile of their return did he heave a small sigh of relief.

The harsh lights of the FOB's main entry point in the distance beckoned them back, painful against eyes that have accustomed themselves to the blackness. He blinked furiously, trying to pull the structure back into focus. Took in its shape, its fortifications and the desolate figure at the watchtower…that was strangely absent. Not a change of shift, which could only mean—

Realisation fell like a load of bricks.

 _Fuck._

A sudden shout in rapid-fire Pashto broke his troubled thoughts and the hushed cover of darkness. His brain scrambled to translate the harsh, foreign sounds that made no sense until he untangled the string of chatter into single words that made him pull Two Section back from their approach.

 _Enemy…target…Taliban…_

The distant, haphazard rattle of gunfire burst through, the fortification of the FOB now a barricade for them.

The compound had been breached, somehow. To do so was a foolhardy, high-risk move, which meant it had to be a suicide mission.

How many of them there were, where the hell they were, how many they'd killed or the damage they'd done were all questions he'd had no answer to.

Only the grim understanding that the FOB had just become a slaughterhouse.

James hurtled backwards reflexively, whispering his orders to the crouched circle of soldiers.

"Too many unknown variables, with no tactical plan of defence. We're out of options." He saw their faces—wide-eyed, full of terror, choked with what could be the finality of it all. Met every one of their gazes, wanting to send them off with the final statement that said he was proud to have served alongside them. Returned Dawes's steady stare, wanting to say much more that he couldn't convey.

Time had just run out.

So he kept it simple and succinct. "Do a split-second assessment of the situation. Differentiate between friend and foe. Defend the FOB at all costs. Take out the insurgents."

"Yes, Sir!"

He eyed the remaining distance they'd have to cover on foot, then gave them a quick nod to move. Half the lads with him, the other half with Kinders.

"Shoot to kill."


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: My original intention was to post this as a huge, ending chapter but it had seriously gone on way too long for me to handle it properly. So think of this as a prelude to the closing bit, which will be the next and last chapter. And I guess Captain James will get to be a hero once again, at least to Molly, as though she needs another reason to adore him._

 _We're nearly there! Thanks for staying with this._

{…}

The insurgents had approached from the west, their trails scuffed into the ground visible under the night vision scope.

Ducking her head down as she squared her shoulders under the weight of her combat gear, Molly flicked the rivulets of sweat away from her forehead, hearing the rough, sharp pants of the lads as they sprinted towards the FOB. Bossman's longer strides had put him ahead as he split east for half the section to get to the base's rear exit.

But before any of them got further, the ground shook. Hard.

Rocked with a series of small explosions.

The impact threw her backward, emptying the breath from her lungs in a hard, hard whoosh, the deafening roar eerily obscuring the sounds of combat around her, as though a dense fog of disorientation that she couldn't easily walk out of had just descended.

 _What the hell was going on?_

A hard hand under her armpit yanked her upright again before the boss's face came into view. He was yelling her name and scowling it seemed, but only his mouth moved; she heard nothing except for the persistent high-pitched ring in her ears.

James righted her, then forcibly moved her to his left, inevitably widening her previously-limited scope of vision.

From the exit, a plume of smoke rose from behind the Hesco Bastions.

With the help of the external lights, she saw that the barbed wire had been blown apart, as were the earthen dams and concrete barriers beneath it that had become high mounds of scattered rock, stained a deep claret by some fucking sod's body as he'd cleared the way into the base for the rest of his mates.

A bloodied hand and a headless torso, partially buried under the barrier, confirmed that suspicion.

Still, they moved, the dizziness from being thrown was making her head swim and her heartbeat uneven. But her senses were slowly readjusting, registering the familiar surroundings that were now nearly reduced to a pile of rubble. The boss had only slowed down a little, dragging her towards the hole in the fortification as he made the section fall in line behind the bastions, on both sides of the gaping hole. His instructions—yelled and barked through the comm—crackled faintly through her radio as though from a distance.

"Dawes, Baz, follow me! The rest of you, provide cover!

She crouched on one knee next to Baz and Nude-nut, waiting for the boss's signal, poised on a knife's edge of a sprint start before the pistol went off.

It came in a sharp hand motion, his eyes meeting hers fleetingly before he took point and moved in the gap in the bastions.

Immediately, she ran forward at his flank, the SA80 already pointed towards his left as Baz took the right position of defence. The base, as far as she could see, was in piss-poor shape, but several collapsed structures provided sufficient cover that they could crouch behind.

Falling onto her stomach and compacting herself into a space carved out by a fallen gabion and the remains of a roof, she barely felt the hard crunch of gravel and debris that made small rips in the thick combat shirt as she propped the rifle up on the rough surface of the gabion wall that acted as a firing platform of sorts.

Bodies lay scattered—uniformed in ANA colours—, blood-crusted and bullet-ridden, around the exit and the logistics area. Some torn apart by blasts too strong for a human body to withstand, others still somehow intact despite the explosive force of an IED.

Belatedly, she realised they were ANA soldiers who had died either trying to run away or defending the base and a quick assessment told her that nothing more could be done for them.

Hanging half from the watchtower and half down the ladder was the dead sentry on duty, the weight of his rifle and gravity already conspiring to tug him the whole way down. In the far corner, the med tent had long gone up in flames—one of the few and fragile structures that had been the first to have had fallen victim to some explosive device.

Movement was automatic—training and muscle memory had taught her how to use a rifle without needing to think about it anymore. She counted down the seconds in her head as she inhaled deep, held her breath and tightened her finger on the trigger.

The bullets flew loose, embedding themselves in the torso of the first insurgent that crossed her path from the wreckage. He slumped silently against the FOB's fortification, the AK-47 carelessly slung around his shoulder and neck falling uselessly to the ground.

 _Rinse, repeat_.

She slammed in a new magazine into the rifle, took aim, fired.

Dimly, she felt, rather than saw the boss and the rest do the same. He was shouting again, she realised, but whether it was because of her reduced hearing or the dazed she couldn't shake herself out of, the words were making no sense.

The destruction around her, not unlike the scenes fed to recruits in mission-specific training sessions, was real, but it had taken on a surreal quality, the churning chaos in her mind mirroring the chaos that had engulfed the FOB, detached from her physical movements.

Finger on trigger… _fire_.

Reload. Fire— _again_ _and again and_ —

 _Dawes…Dawes, what the fuck—_

"Dawes! Stop!"

The sound of her name, yelled in the boss's voice, tangible and said out loud, brought the present into focus.

The last of the insurgents lay unmoving; she'd been reloading to fire into thin air had James not stopped her.

A heavy hand on her shoulder shook the cotton wool out of her ears, reassembling the fractured sense of battle within a shocking millisecond. The fog that'd encased her head lifted all of a sudden, the momentary vacuum quickly filled with the jarring dissonance of the sights and sounds of close combat, shaped into horrific coherence for the first time since it'd become clear that the FOB had come under attack.

The pop and cackle of the dying flames, the plumes of smoke, the scattered bodies in rubble. They lay like how a girl in pieces had ended up, whose gravesite was the hard Afghan earth and a spattered wall.

Kinders was speaking through the radio, his report terse and sharp. She caught only the end of it, only that he had moved past the entrance and into the unloading area.

"—significant casualty rate in the ANA ranks." A long pause. "We lost Mansfield."

James's hard stare was questioning as she turned to him, his hand already on the scope of her rifle, pressing it downwards.

"Copy. I'm giving an all clear. For now," he spoke into the radio over her shock. "Keep the perimeter secure as Kinders, Dawes and I recce for the injured and assess the situation. The rest of you, stay alert."

She was already shouldering the rifle, tearing off her combat gloves and ripping open the disposable ones as she hurried through the debris with the boss.

But there was only hollow resignation when it started to become clear few needed a medic's attention really; there was absolutely nothing more she could do for the poor buggers who had no pulse but whip out the body bags later. Too many had gone down in the short but intense skirmish, but many of them had been part of the temporary ANA troops sent for reinforcement—all poorly-equipped and unprepared for combat.

A moan rose above the carnage, issued from under what remained of the ops tent.

"Hang in there, mate! I'm getting to 'ya!" Her shout came out surprisingly steady, considering what she'd just witnessed.

Her trembling legs took her in the direction of the sound, the desperation to save a life the only driving force.

Up close, she saw that the front of the ops tent had completely collapsed and the structural damage to the back of it meant it wouldn't be standing long at all. Dropping straight onto her stomach, she shimmied beneath the heavy canvas into the hushed, whirring sounds of the running computers. High above, the glare of the external lights gave way to murky, flickering light bulbs that illuminated the tent and a newfound stillness that was a strange reprieve from the sounds of the aftermath.

The auxiliary generators had taken over, their low hum a dull counterpoint to the slight ringing still in her ears.

The boards used for tactical meetings had overturned, the communications systems lay in disarray. Radios and phones hung off their wires, dangling an inch off the ground, some tangled in the broken benches that had once lined the space in front of the boards. Red warning lights pulsed on the panels, lending an eerie, grating urgency that made her hands unsteady.

Half buried under the torn map of the Helmand province was a combat boot, British Army standard issue no less, with no foot attached to it. Too large for a woman's, but an average size for a man's.

In the distance, Molly thought she heard Kinders call out for her.

Apprehension nipped hard as she lifted the boards, shuffled through the papers and files and searched for the casualty. Or had she merely imagined the cry of distress?

The boot was proof that someone had been here, but that wasn't enough—

A softer whimper sounded, behind the cabinets towards the back.

The path to the back was strewn with more papers, toppled chairs and overturned cabinets. She crawled past some, climbed and stumbled over others. Progress was slow and painful, the rest of the ops tent now a perilous and challenging obstacle course of live wires, roadblocks and destroyed surveillance equipment.

"Keep talking! I'm coming!"

A bootless leg and a slack hand loosely clutching a Glock stuck out in the dim space between a partially fallen cabinet and a support beam.

Unmoving.

"I see you, mate, keep making noises for me, yeah?"

Almost within reaching distance. Just about—

Oh fuck. Fuck!

Her foot snagged on a loose cord, upending her balance so completely that she hit the ground hard in a clumsy tumble, the sharp edge of an upturned table slamming straight into her side. Black spots danced across her eyes as she rode the crest of the pain that blocked out everything else, gritting her teeth as she waited an eternity for it to fade.

 _Dawes!_

Again, she heard her name…called beyond the reaches the tent it seemed. The boss's terse bark this time.

Only when the throb dulled did she reach out again, her fingers brushing the tip of the casualty's foot. She heaved herself forward on her stomach, getting her entire hand on the ankle to give it an insistent shake.

"Hey mate, you there? Saying something for me. I'm coming, yeah? Just hang in there."

The utter silence from the faceless, injured man was confusing. Then where had the sound come from? Was there another casualty buried under the debris that she hadn't seen at all?

She dragged herself to her knees, then covered the last bit in a crawl to where the man sat in a half slouch, unmoving. With a hand on his arms and another on his leg, she dragged him out as gently as she could without toppling the cabinet. His bloodied face and neck gave her pause, but the spark of recognition lit immediately.

Major Beck.

She took a deep breath. Tried to remember the training drilled into the medics at every single session.

 _Airway, breathing, circulation._

Her shaky fingers were on his throat, her face near his nostrils. There was no pulse, no movement, no rasp of breath that skimmed her cheek.

Had he made the sound of distress then? Did she just lose him?

She did a quick examination of the bullet wounds: blood still flowed from the neck and head shots, already slowing, but it had been fatally and blessedly quick. Probably near instant.

Beck had been dead long before she'd even entered the tent.

But there had to be someone else here—the sound of distress wasn't a figment of her imagination. It'd come from the tent and if it hadn't been Beck, another casualty would have made it.

Unless…

A hard, choking hold around her throat lifted her to her feet involuntarily, as the barrel of a rifle poked mercilessly into her bruised ribs.

Her vision coloured yellow as she fought the gag reflex. The panicked scramble for air was instinctive; her fingers went to her throat to loosen the unrelenting grip, but it tightened instead as she was dragged upright and around. His hand spanned her throat, slowly crushing her larynx. He had a leg hooked between hers, keeping her body prisoner by size and strength. With her lungs constricting, all she could do was to kick uselessly at the insurgent who'd laid the trap, her shallow breaths laboured as her body fought for oxygen.

 _No…no…no!_

His face made several pieces of the puzzle fall in place.

Badrai.

Because of Bashira. The inadvertent humiliation that she'd brought on her family for consorting with the foreign troops. The surveillance photos of Molly found in the raid.

Hot, rancid breaths rasped in her ears. It made her flinch and twist away from him, but his chokehold was too secure for her to move an inch further without him discharging the rifle.

She needed air. It didn't…couldn't come. Couldn't help the convulsive movement that her body made as she tried to inhale once more.

The desperate effort was…negligible.

She tasted a potent mix of fear and fury, the fierce need to survive warring with the pull of giving into asphyxiation. The certainty of her first tour having long gone to shit tightened her gut. The letter she'd written while in training quite a lifetime ago…was it in Corporal Geddings's hands, or had it been channelled through some part of the Army's bureaucratic channels and gotten lost somewhere in the moors?

"Dawes!"

The sound of Pashto hit her ears—a rant of an insane plonker she didn't understand, just as she heard the boss's familiar baritone that came from somewhere near.

 _Bossman…_

Coasting the edge of unconsciousness, she shut her eyes and forced the tension to leave her body for a few seconds in a facsimile of limpness, before kicking out violently again.

She heard a crunch of bone and cartilage as Badrai grunted, his movement shifting enough so that his hold on her loosened. By a stroke of sheer luck, her boot had connected hard with his knee, dislodging her and changing their positions momentarily so that she was now sprawled face down on the ground once again as he threw her off.

Briefly, she caught a glimpse of his features that rage had contorted as the heavy weight on her chest and head eased off abruptly, air suddenly flowing unhindered through her windpipe. She took grateful gulps of it even as it made her wheeze, tasting the metallic bloom of blood in her mouth as she scrambled for her service pistol and tried coming back up her knees, already half-expecting the chokehold to return or a bullet hole in her head as Badrai regained his advantage. But the coughing wouldn't stop. Her lungs still burned as she grappled with moving—

A hand darted out and wrapped around her bicep, pulling her hard just as she managed to free the Glock from the holster, only for it to be flung aside when Badrai dragged her towards him.

Too far to reach.

She heard the flick of a safety catch, an odd click as she struggled to get free. But her own gun remained untouched—

The blast of two shots fired in succession and in close quarters left her ears ringing.

She whipped around as hard as she could, seeing two shots to the head and neck of the insurgent, nearly mirroring Beck's wounds.

 _Bossman._

She shrugged away Badrai's now-flaccid hand and rolled away to relative safety even if she felt the keen slice of an exposed wire cut her palm, suddenly needing to scrub away the spatter of blood and brain matter that had stained her MTPs and the khaki canvas of the tent.

The boss was already holstering his own service pistol as he brought her upright and into the support of his own body. His own solid grip, so different from Badrai's hold, made the tension leach from her shoulders, the intensity of her relief so strong that it bordered on agonising pain.

"Breathe, Dawes. It's over."

His whisper was oddly gentle, a sharp contrast to what he'd just done, but the breadth of emotions that she saw in his eyes gutted her.

Her fingers tightened in the fabric of his shirt, then on his forearms. "Boss."

It came out as a hoarse, smoker's croak. With some alarm, she realised that she couldn't speak properly. Badrai's chokehold had caused some damage after all, but a bruised larynx was still better than being dead.

He shook his head at her poor attempt to speak as his fingers gently roamed the bruises that had begun to appear on her throat.

"I thought I lost you."

 _Ditto._

She'd thought the same. Wondered if her last thought before Badrai killed her would be of the boss or her family.

But once more, he'd been the anchor in a world gone down in flames.

"Sir, I—"

Speaking was like crunching and swallowing gravel, the agony of it still too grating to bear.

"Don't even try, Dawes and that's an order. You talk too much anyway, so just…shut the fuck up for once."

She sniffed a short, incredulous laugh. The presence of the boss next to her was a profound relief, halting the spinning world and colouring it right. She allowed her sense of time to go lax; it could have been ten seconds or ten minutes that went by, before she took in the sight of the bodies lying adjacent to each other, then thought of the work that awaited them.

But exhaustion was written into every pore, every muscle. For the both of them.

As though he'd read her mind, he nodded, the cracks in his inscrutable, untouchable façade forming in the flash of grief that she caught before he averted his eyes.

"Soon, Dawes. We'll take care of them as we always do."


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N:_ _Would you believe me if I said that 'Kindling' was meant to be more of an adventure-like tale, with some levity in it? I got alarmed myself when it all went from grim to grimmer and I can't blame any of you for wanting something lighter and funnier after this black hole of suspense, angst and romance surpassed what the series gave us. But domestic fluff is not quite my forte so I'll leave it to the very excellent writers who excel at it to take M/CJ past the Army stage._

 _That said, I loved every bit of writing M/CJ and I hope I've done them and the whole military setup justice (and hopefully it wasn't rubbish!) throughout. If I had my way with S3, M/CJ would take centre stage, no questions asked._

 _Now that we're back to dealing with the UST with Molls and James, well, all I can say is that this chapter kind of veers into 'M' territory. Once again, thanks for being with me on this journey that became so hard to reinvent after a while. I'm relieved it's done._

{…}

The sprawl of Bastion was a luxurious comfort after the move from the FOB. After the carnage of the FOB raid, the dusty, squat buildings were as good a haven that bluntly stood under the unrelenting sun.

But as much as Molly liked being back at…civilisation, being in the hospital and subjected to medical and preliminary psychological tests _and_ counselling sessions had been torturous. Contact with the rest of the Section had been minimal and the only consolation she had was that the rest were undergoing the same treatment in some form or other.

The physical diagnosis had been better than expected: bruised ribs, bruised larynx that resulted in a voice better suited to aged one-hit wonder type songs, surface abrasions that time would slough off.

Her mental state on the other hand, probably lay in question. The deeper scars—the debilitating memories of the past months—that lay under her skin were the indelible stains of a damaged psyche.

Molly glanced at the calendar and the small bedside clock that had found a permanent place at the table beside her bunk.

The bodies—Beck, Mansfield and a few others whom she'd known—had been flown home. With the Union Jack draped over them, greeted by weeping family members, probably about now.

As though she'd enjoyed some sort of self-inflicted torture, she'd counted down the hours from the time they'd left the FOB to the very minute the Hercules hit the runway at Brize Norton, as though paying her penance through survivor's guilt.

The confined space of the bunk got intolerable, closing in on the undefined gaps in her own emotions that hadn't yet been sorted out. It was enough to send her fleeing that prison and out into the open, dusty air, where breathing room could be found.

The walk turned into a light jog that took her past the American section, partially-dismantled structures and into a corner that had her feet coming to a halt.

It was a jolt of surprise to see officers' quarters come into view. More specifically, the line that held the boss's one.

She thought that she'd merely wandered out of her bunk aimlessly, got lost in thought without anyone giving her any heed…only to have ended up in an unexpected place. In an hour before dawn and at the tail end of a night shift, perhaps there simply weren't enough personnel around to hassle her back to where she belonged.

Not a bright idea after all.

Her feelings for the boss—long past silly infatuation and… _fondness_ —, the confusion and the grief that she couldn't make sense of had become unpredictable variations in a puzzle that had no solution.

She'd just turned her back and taken a step in the opposite direction when the door swung quietly open and the boss stood, back-lit by the table lamp's warm glow.

"You've been standing there way too long, Dawes."

Despite the ungodly hour, James looked wide-awake and as fresh as a daisy, as though PT awaited.

The memory of having been caught in non-regulation wear still burned. "Tell me there's no PT at 0530, Sir."

"There wouldn't be one if you weren't in your stilettos."

Bloody Rupert.

"How did you know I was here?"

He pointed at the half-drawn blinds with a mocking finger. After a quick look around, he tilted his head, beckoning her inside.

His private office and bunk was a fancy house compared to her shared room in that tiny flat that every family member used. Rectangular and compartmentalised and neatly arranged with very little out of place, it looked like an extension of the man himself, except for the small coffee machine and the funny little pods that gleamed a dull pink under the sallow light and sat in a small glass next to the pile of files and papers.

The boss's quarters, so far removed from the mess of shredded tents and the blood-soaked earth in the FOB, even smelled like the fresh rain room mist that belonged in some shop along Regent Street than in Bastion. The ridiculous _normalcy_ of the setup had her wanting to burst into hysterical laughter after the hell week they'd just endured.

James wasted no time getting to the heart of the problem. "Couldn't sleep?"

She sank into one of the single-seaters at his desk and found the pattern of the fabric fascinating when he sat next to her on the edge of the tiny coffee table.

Too much had been left undefined between them, the emotional complications that she thought she'd left behind in the cramped walls of a small home returning in a way no one could have expected.

"I'll never be happier to get an uninterrupted night."

"The thing with our jobs is, we can't unsee the things we've seen," he paused, his stare unnervingly intense. "I'm so fucking proud of you, Dawes, but that seems entirely inadequate a thing to say right now."

She thought of the coordinated attacks of FOBs in the southwest provinces, of which theirs had merely been a part. That Badrai had a hand in this plan didn't come as a surprise. It had taken days for the full debriefing to happen and the casualties sorted, where the mad scramble for answers had finally come in the form of the joint-coalition commanders' reports that had uncovered the ANA leak and the Taliban raids way too late.

Too late at least, for Beck, Mansfield and a ton of others who'd lost something other than their lives which could bloody well be a fate worse than death.

And there it was again—the need to pace, to outrun the prickly, rolling tension that'd settled between her shoulders and in her suddenly stiff limbs.

She shot to her feet, barely registering that the boss had matched her movements, feeling his hands around her shoulders—

The choked tears came without warning, the ugly harvest of too many close shaves and the senseless acts of war and the dull ache that couldn't seem to go away where he was concerned. Yet they stopped as soon as they started, only because she'd been too hollow to even have that good cry.

"This is hard, Boss."

"It's hard, Dawes." If his answer was long time in coming, his agreement was immediate as he ran a hand through his hair and ruffled the unruly curls further. "And I think it will always be hard. But, after a while, you learn not to think about it."

He leaned in closer, the proximity of him still a breathless rush which she didn't think would fade anytime soon. The tentative touch of his forehead against hers and the feel of his fingers wiping away the tears were more comforting than sensual. Still, the spark of awareness, that indubitable chemistry between them flared, the seemingly innocent and reassuring touches of camaraderie and comfort abruptly taking on a carnal sheen that left her inarticulate and his quarters charged with a different kind of tension.

"Do you? Think about it?"

Suddenly, it wasn't the traumatic stresses of war and duty that they were talking about anymore but a shocking slide into something else entirely.

The stark look he gave her was heavy with meaning, his murmured confession barely carrying through the shrinking space between them.

"Always."

His hands were suddenly spanning her hips, sliding the nightshirt past her waist until she felt the heat of him on her torso. Still he moved upwards, his hooded eyes holding both a challenge and a plea she couldn't refuse, not when her own desire matched his.

The psychologists would have called this stress, or post-traumatic stress more likely—and not something that they'd ever excuse for the behaviour of a commanding officer and his medic involved in a series of extraordinary events during a single tour. The numerous possibilities that had existed but never came to pass of losing each other—or better _academically_ defined as impulse and fear—were sufficient but perfectly unacceptable reasons for pushing past the regulations he'd revered.

But the Captain James she'd come to know on the platform at Brize wasn't the same man now. The tour had somehow shaken him more deeply than the others had—the hardness, the terrifying intensity she'd glimpsed from time to time that escaped the unruffled Captain's bearing were new.

They were textbook examples, neither the first, nor the last. Just two more people who did stupid things under pressure. Yet weren't they more than that? She had known, as had he, even before they'd snogged after the RPG attack, the little moments between them had added up and etched sharp lines of clarity that converged in the inevitable.

Her hands were already on his belt, pulling the heavy fabric apart. All eager, urgent actions, with newfound enthusiasm that left clothing marring the neatness of his quarters, as they went to a place where every clear-cut regulation was an illegible scribble on the wall and jumbled words on a piece of paper.

She found herself pinned against the desk with her legs around his waist and the rest of him supporting her, the discomfort barely tangible as he slid her down until they were aligned. He caught her sobbing gasps with his mouth, his hips already snugly snapping against hers. She savoured every wet glide, their movements now solely governed by the mindless need to come.

The quiver in her legs matched his and with a smooth swing around, he'd deposited her on the bed built only for a single person, shifting until they were once again skin to skin. The constricted space only forced them closer, but they squeezed to fit in more ways than one, the physical burden of his body on hers—in hers—strangely unburdening her of the extreme stress they'd both faced in the tour.

He took it slow once again, resetting the pace with long, heavy thrusts, quelling for a moment, their raging need into coiled, excruciating anticipation ready to spring when he willed it. He was doling out sheer agony and she suspected, knew it enough to put them both through torture of a different kind.

But this way, she found herself arching high into him, the heady rush of blood in her veins heralding the looming precipice off a crumbling edge. She bit down on her lips to stifle the sounds of ecstasy, then felt rather than heard him swan dive after her as he panted the aftershocks into her neck.

Being with him had felt as though she was standing at the edge of something immense and tipping forward in a ropeless plunge towards the ground, where in that ten-second span of time, she would wake in an imperfect and incomplete dream. Her hands over his sweaty skin and heaving chest were the only solid assurances that it hadn't been one.

Neither of them was near sorted out. Add this complication that she couldn't ever regret and the questions doubled tenfold.

She suspected it would take a while. Weeks, maybe months, until their feet touched solid ground without fracturing the rest of themselves.

Except that James was the lesson in gravity—in falling—she'd never learned.

{…}

Contentment came in odd shapes, sizes and colours.

James found it today in the dusky sky streaked with the bold brushstrokes of orange, purple and red and the hot cup of Rosabaya next to him. Signalling a gradual change in the season at this elevation, the odd, cool breeze alternated in between the hot desert drafts and tore the scent of the coffee from his cup.

Dawes had found them a corner that she'd termed the 'shithole' because of its proximity to the latrines that had thankfully, already been demolished according to the ISAF's expedited withdrawal schedule.

Slightly elevated, surveillance-free, the _shithole_ was an abandoned site not too far from his bunk where they'd sat mostly in silence for the past few days—and on orders given by the doctors in the camp hospital—together or alone…and did nothing until their medical clearance had been signed off by another commanding officer who'd taken Beck's duties in the interim.

He allowed himself to get lost in his own thoughts, permitting the clock for once, to tick backwards, slowly letting the events of the past few months and years out of the mental cage he'd locked them in. He counted the regrets, the triumphs and mulled over the things in between that had shaken him to the core. For once, he didn't have a clue what lay past the Hercules's landing at Brize Norton, or that conflict would have had outcomes he couldn't ever have foreseen.

The uncertainty wasn't near comfortable, but neither was it gutting.

When he blinked to clear his head, it was with a huge amount of surprise to see that night had fallen and Dawes had taken a seat beside him, watching the clouds move in to cover the stars.

"Penny for 'em, boss?"

He picked up the cold coffee from the ground, sniffed it and grimaced. "Just thinking."

"Now that's dangerous."

"Oh, fucking hilarious, Dawes. I reckon it's no more dangerous than you trying to think."

They watched the hassled movements of the logistics team in a faraway section of the camp as the sudden jagged flash of lightning cast everything, just for a second, in a whiter shade of pale. Dawes stuck her fingers in her ears just as the thunder rumbled through, loud enough to make him wince—because it was all too reminiscent of gunshots—and hold onto _her_ for support.

With his arm around her, he felt, rather than heard her huff a laugh, a reminder they hadn't too many reasons to laugh of late.

"Like bloody ol' London doesn't get 'nuff of this."

"Get used to it. You'll be back in rainy England before you know it."

"Right now, I'm thinking it doesn't sound too bad. Though I took a sickie when it came to the swim test. Water and me, we ain't good together."

It made him laugh—just the way Dawes had intended obviously—and think of the depths of the paddling pool he could throw her in and she turned to him, face already tilted up in a mischievous smirk.

He shook his head in mock despair and stood slowly, holding out a hand to help her up. "Unbelievable."

The first drops hit the dry, cracked ground, the scent of wet earth, ozone and wild vegetation rising on the breeze that wafted through the valleys. He inhaled sharply in appreciation—as the sky ripped open in a rare thunderstorm, the gust of wind, rain and sand severe enough to cause the distant figures they'd been watching to run for shelter.

Dawes sneaked a surreptitious look around, her hand still in his. Caution was as much a hard bitch to shake off as it could be an indispensable ally, even if the days before they left for Brize could be counted down with one hand.

"Stay or go, boss?"

He hesitated, visually treading the same path her eyes took. Right here, right now, the freedom to indulge was a temptation as old as time, an offering of a bite of the forbidden fruit by a woman and a snake.

There was Dawes and the Army, but there was also unscripted compromise and something else not yet definitive. They'd written themselves into the shades of grey—where laughter and happiness did exist as well—that hadn't been apparent until he'd been dragged beyond his own limits and forced to acknowledge the depth of disquiet that'd caused.

He had to speak louder above the din of the storm. "Depends on whether you like getting wet, Dawes."

A look of utter amazement crossed her face. "You didn't just say that."

Laughter again. Or maybe it was Dawes-induced madness.

It felt like an experimental moment that was deliriously unreasonable, painful and hilarious because it was familiar and yet not, like the ill-fitting combat boots that caused skin to blister on impact and he needed her help to sort out something apparently quite simple that he should have been able to go at it alone.

They stayed despite her apparent dislike of water, their lips fusing, lost in the oblivion of each other and in the nervous energy of endings and beginnings.

In the Afghan rain, the blood-soaked ghosts washed clean.

-Fin


End file.
